Santa Cruz leads wire to wire as Napa plays best game of season in opener at Justin-Siena Christmas Classic
By Kyle Foster
Follow on X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
A sign of growth in a team is when they compete against teams that should beat them by a large margin.
In the 2nd annual Justin-Siena Christmas Classic at the Dan Clark Gym, this is exactly what happened as Santa Cruz edged Napa, 61-55, in a boys tournament opener.
Throughout the game, Santa Cruz (7-2) would always seem to stay arm’s length away as they led wire to wire.
The Cardinals were able to pull away and gain their largest lead of 11 points with some timely buckets. They also jumped out to the lead by making the majority of their three-pointers in the game.
However, the second half was a different story as Napa (3-7) made their run to keep the game close. Out of the half, they ran off a 6-0 run that cut the lead to one point and lasted till there was 4:57 left to play in the third quarter.
“In terms of adjustments, I think you see a lot of what we’re adjusting on the court,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said of the bust to begin the second half that had the Cardinals reeling. “So it’s not like there’s some big halftime speech, it’s just continue to execute what we’re doing. You saw us come out and execute a couple plays and they didn’t guard it well and they gave us wide-open shots and my guys can make wide-open shots.”
One of the reasons the Grizzlies also came back in the game was the fact that they rotated and limited the number of shots to go in from beyond the arc.
“We game plan to take away the paint and we said if they’re going to beat us over the top, they beat us over the top,” Carattini explained. “We knew their percentages would come down. The numbers don’t lie.”
Santa Cruz was also forced to settle for long shots from three-point land as well with the paint being guarded by Napa sophomore center Will Flynn. He altered the shots as he finished with 5 blocked shots with just 6 points and 2 rebounds.
“We’re really trying to clog that paint anyway,” Carattini explained. “So if you happen to get past our first line of defense, when you have to meet a shot blocker, it just makes it really difficult to get to the rim. I thought that was a huge part of our game plan is preventing them from getting into the paint, and I thought for the majority of the time we did that. They got a few offensive rebounds, which hurt us.”
On the other hand, another thing that kept Napa in the contest was the fact that they had a trio of double-digit scorers.
Leading the way was Eli Mindle. The senior finished with a team-high of 22 points and 3 rebounds. He scored 11 points in each half as well.
“Man, I’ve been watching that kid make threes for like 15 months now,” Carattini said of Mindle. “So I’m not surprised when he makes them. Like I said, they let him be open and that’s on them. We’re going to game plan to get him open.”
Christian Williams added 13 points and 4 rebounds in the game. The senior guard scored 8 points in the first half and made both free throws.
Lastly, Jayden Quintana scored 10 points with 4 rebounds. He scored 6 of those in the second half and made 3 of 4 free throws.
Rounding out the scoring for Napa was Patricia Buoncristiani (2 points, 1 rebound) and German Camacho (2 points, 1 rebound).
Napa will be back in action on Friday at 4:30 pm when they face the San Rafael. The winner of that game will go to the consolation championship game on Saturday.
