Vintage grinds out low-scoring, hard-fought victory over Santa Rosa in home opener
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
There are times when you know coming in you’re going to have to earn a victory. That’s just how it is in sports.
So it should be no surprise that the Vintage boys’ basketball team had to fight and claw for every bucket to beat Santa Rosa, 45-34, in their home opener Tuesday night at Crusher Gym.
Vintage (4-2) was able to gain their separation in the game by holding the Panthers (3-3) to just 16 points in the second half.
The Crushers also didn’t allow a Santa Rosa player to score double-digit points, which also helped.
“I think we didn’t break when they were making a run, got a little frustrated that we had a lead, and then they cut into I think they cut it down to three,” Vintage head coach Ben Gongora said as to what the difference in the game was. “So I think the lead went from 8 or 9 down to 3 and we could’ve easily gotten frustrated, put our head down, and allow that momentum to benefit them. And we were able to persevere and regroup, and catch our breath and get back to what we were doing.”
With all that being said, it wasn’t exactly an easy night on the offensive side for Vintage either. The largest run they went on in the contest was the 6-0 run that gave them an early lead, which was followed up by Santa Rosa scoring seven consecutive points to take a 7-6 lead through a period of play.
One of the reasons the game changed after the first quarter was due to the unsung hero of the game that was Luke Haeuser. He finished with 8 crucial points, all scored in the second and third quarters to go along with a pair of rebounds.
“I think we had some energy coming off the bench,” Gongora said as to what changed after a sluggish first quarter. “Luke Haeuser came in and Luke is awesome. Luke is a spark plug in practice. He is not a basketball player. He’s just a gritty athlete. He hustles, he fights, and he’s not afraid to work harder.”
Yet with all that, there was still one constant in the game. That one constant was the nightly presents of senior forward Ben Jackson. He accounted for a third of the Crushers’ offense in the game ending with 15 points, 12 rebounds, 2 assists, and a steal. The 15-point effort was a game-high as well. He also scored 9 of his points in the second half to lead his team to the hard-earned victory while making all 5 shots from the free-throw line.
“He got bruised,” Gongora said of the effort that Jackson gave by doing a big chunk of the scoring. “He got banged up tonight. People are gonna say what’s impressive is 15 points or 12 rebounds that that’s impressive. To me, the most impressive thing with Ben is as often as he has the ball in his hands and he played 31 minutes tonight, he only had two turnovers.”
Vintage’s second-highest scorer in the game was Nathan Marroquin. The junior guard ended the night with 9 points with a pair of rebounds. He scored 7 points in the second half and made 2 of 3 shots from the line.
Others scoring in the game included Jace Lopez (5 points, 2 rebounds), Connor Gongora (4 points, 1 rebound), Grayson Wyman (2 points, 4 rebounds, 1 blocked shot), and Si Sabbagha (2 points, 2 rebounds).
Vintage will have a day off before visiting Concord on Friday night at 7 pm. This ends a stretch of 4 games in 6 days for Santa Rosa after winning the consolation bracket in last weekend’s Wine Valley Tournament. Santa Rosa’s next game will be Thursday at 7:30 pm when they face Oroville in the Panther showdown at Chico High School.
