St. Patrick-St. Vincent gains control early in first, uses physicality and tempo to beat Justin-Siena in Christmas Classic
By Kyle Foster
Follow on X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Sometimes a promising start is nothing but fool’s gold. That good start is all for not as an all-out avalanche comes afterward.
On Thursday night at the 2nd annual Christmas Classic, this is what happened as St. Patrick-St. Vincent of Vallejo beat Justin-Siena, 56-32, at the Dan Clark Gym.
After jumping out to a quick 7-0 lead to begin the game, everything went downhill for the Braves (8-2) as the Bruins (5-1) ran off a 9-0 burst to end the quarter. This only continued as St. Patrick-St. Vincent went into the break with a 29-19 lead.
“Coming in, we knew they were a good team that was gonna pressure and change defenses a lot, and they did,” Justin-Siena head coach Andy Bettencourt said. “I think, unfortunately, we always say that our defense is going to be the most consistent thing that we have, and our defense wasn’t very good tonight. We allowed a couple of their players to get some really good looks and they got in rhythm.”
The Bruins gained a double-digit lead in the second quarter thanks to forcing Justin-Siena into a bunch of turnovers from their full-court press. The up-tempo pace also took the Braves’ (7-2) half-court offense out of whack.
Mainly the most noticeable thing was the fact that St. Patrick-St. Vincent was clearly the more physical team in the game as well, which helped them get a plethora of offensive rebounds to push the gap wider and wider.
“They were way more physical than us,” Bettencourt explained. “Credit to them for how physical they played, and we need to get back to practice and get better because they definitely showed some things we need to get better at.”
Another thing that wasn’t on Justin-Siena’s side was the fact that they were unable to get their top weapons on the offensive side going. The Bruins did this by doubling Jordan Washington and fronting her, making it hard for her to get points in the paint. In the game, Washington was held to just 6 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots.
“I thought they limited the amount of times we could get her the ball inside, I thought they fronted her pretty well,” Bettencourt said of what the Bruins did to slow down the double-double machine that Washington normally is. “Quite frankly, we’ve got to be better starting with me through every player on the roster of understanding, offensively and defensively what we need to do to be successful and it was a failure on all parts tonight. We just did not do anything on either end of the four that we need to do to be successful.”
Leading the way for the Braves in the contest was sophomore guard Dylan Zapolski. She made three shots from three-point land and scored 6 points in the first half.
“Anytime you have players that can shoot it obviously helps your scoring and your floor spacing,” Bettencourt said of what Zapolski brings his team. “Dylan since day one in our program has been knocking down shots and she just keeps getting better.”
Others scoring for Justin-Siena in the game were Lauren Keller (6 points, 6 rebounds), Nadia Sousa (4 points, 1 rebound), Naveena Jackson (3 points on 4 free throw attempts, 4 rebounds), and Jesilyn Beaulac (2 points).
Though this game was just a non-league tournament game, it was key for both as both could meet again in the CIF North Coast Section Division 4 playoffs in February. Bettencourt would like another shot at them if it were to come to fruition.
“Hopefully, we do play them again,” the coach said. “Because that means we’ve advanced deep into playoffs. I think the No. 2 seed in NCS was on the line in this game, and I think they will be the two seed as long as they keep playing like they’re playing. So now we’ve got to work to try and be the three seed and that means that hopefully we do point them in a game that means something.”
Justin-Siena will have the day off on Friday before finishing the Christmas Classic against San Rafael at 12 pm on Saturday.
