Mistakes, late De Anza third quarter run come back to bite Napa in season opening loss
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
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The thing about basketball is there are times you leave the gym wondering what could’ve been had this certain thing not happened.
In Tuesday night’s season opener at Messner Gym, there were a lot of missed chances left on the floor that came back to haunt the Napa High boys basketball team in their 73-58 loss to De Anza of El Sobrante.
The Dons (1-0) were able to put the game away late in the third quarter when they went on an 8-0 that lasted till there was just 2:04 left in the frame to bump their edge to 14 points.
“We let them get too many easy buckets in terms of fouling and turning the basketball over and letting them get early, easy looks not allowing ourselves to get shots up on the other end and get our defense set,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said. “So when you do those things, and, and don’t put together good possessions, they’re gonna get put together good possessions.”
They also were tough to contain from beyond the arc. In the first half alone, they made 7 shots from 3-point land, which vaulted De Anza to a 39-33 lead at the break. In the contest, they made 8 shots from beyond the arc.
Napa didn’t do themselves any favors as well when they got to the line as they converted on 4 of 15 free-throw attempts that would’ve given the game a different look had they shot better.
“We spent a lot of time just talking about focus and being relaxed at the free-throw line,” Carattini explained. “I think just having the right mindset at the free-throw line is the thing. We spend a lot of time conditioning, I wouldn’t say (it’s the) legs. I don’t know that we were very tired there. It’s just we haven’t shot the ball a the free-throw line very well.”
Another thing that helped De Anza gain the edge was the fact that they started the game hot by reeling off an 11-0 run till midway through the first quarter.
However, Napa (0-1) responded well as they outscored De Anza 10-8 to only be down 19-9 after the quarter was over.
“We’re really trying to still learn how to win basketball games,” Carattini pointed out. “Last year, we didn’t have a lot of success on the scoreboard in terms of wins and losses. So there’s still part of that process of understanding, like every single play is the same, and you have to treat it the same with the same energy and the same focus. So once we kind of let them hit us in the mouth, we decided we want to start playing basketball and doing the things that we work on and you saw that there for spurts.”
The Grizzlies also whittled the lead down to 4 at multiple points in the game, but this would be the closest they would get in the contest.
Maybe the main reason Napa was able to stay around in the game was the play of senior guard Christian Williams. He was unguardable as he finished with a team-high of 27 points with 2 rebounds. He did most of his damage in the first half where he scored 16 points. He also made 1 of 3 shots from the free-throw line.
“Obviously, he got hot there and kept us in the game,” Carattini said of Williams. “Christian can shoot it and we know that every day. That’s why our guys have so much confidence, throwing him the basketball, why he has so much confidence, pulling it we talked about all the time, you know, we’ve got a couple (of) guys that can really shoot it. So when they’re open, they’ve got the green light. He just got to his spots. He had his hands ready, he was ready to shoot, and tonight they were falling for him.”
After that, there was no one else in double figures. Eli Mindle finished with 9 points and 5 rebounds. Jayden Quintana also scored 9 points while finishing with 4 rebounds.
Rounding out the scoring for Napa was Gael Bazoungissa (5 points, 2 rebounds), Aiden Faughn (4 points, 4 rebounds), Will Flynn (2 points, 7 rebounds), and Patricio Buoncristiani (2 points, 2 rebounds).
Napa will now host the annual Wine Valley Tournament, which has been renamed to the Denny Lewis Invitational. This will take place over the weekend at Napa High. It all starts on Thursday when Napa will face Delta-Clarksburg at 6:30 pm.
