Las Lomas uses full-court press to force turnovers, beat Napa for consolation title in Justin-Siena Christmas Classic
By Kyle Foster
Follow on X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Sports can straight-up be weird. A game can be close, but the score may not reflect that. It’s just how it goes sometimes.
On Saturday afternoon in the consolation championship game of the 2nd annual Justin-Siena Christmas Classic, this is what happened when Las Lomas of Walnut Creek beat Napa, 68-38, in a game played at Clark Gym.
The Knights (6-4) gained control of this one in the second half when they reeled off a 14-0 burst to begin the 4th quarter. This gave Las Lomas a massive 56-31 lead and all but put the game away.
In the second half, the Knights outscored Napa 40-19. Yet another reason why this happened was the full-court zone press that forced numerous turnovers and took the Grizzlies out of their game.
“There’s some times there, we had some lineups where (it’s the) third day of a tournament, we’re trying to rotate some guys and different guys in different spots,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said of what happened when the game got away. “So those guys not making mental mistakes and being able to execute the simple things. Sometimes those seem innocuous, but five points here are three points there and they add up and when you’re not playing your best, it makes it worse.”
However, for a bit in the third quarter, it appeared as if the Grizzlies (4-8) were going to do something they had done in the previous two games of the tournament – start the third quarter with a massive run to climb back into the game. This is what they started to do at first as they reeled off a quick 4 points to get the deficit to five points.
“You saw us try to kind of change tempo a little bit and take control and it worked a little bit,” Carattini said of the initial fast start out of the break. “Then just a lapse here or lapse there, it turns into a three and so when the margin is thin, any one mistake is what can make a difference.”
Yet, this was a very odd game as it was tied at 8 at the end of the first quarter and Las Lomas only led 28-19 at the break. But the second quarter was where the Knights started to dictate the tempo as well.
“They want to play hectic if you can tell just from their from their head coach to their to their guys and their style,” Carattini said of what changed in the second quarter. “They dictated tempo today. We’ve had a good run there of few games of where we were in control of what we wanted to do, and today it got away from us a few times till the point where it just got far enough away where we just couldn’t come back.”
Leading Napa in the game was senior guard Eli Mindle. He finished with a team-high of 11 points. Mindle scored 9 of those points in the first half.
After that, Jayden Quintana finished with 10 points and grabbed 4 rebounds. He scored 6 points before halftime.
Rounding out the scoring for the Grizzlies in the contest was Christian Williams (6 points, 4 rebounds), Patricio Buoncristianni (6 points, 1 rebound), and Gael Bazoungissa (2 points, 2 rebounds, blocked shot).
With this result, Napa finished the Christmas Classic at a 1-2 mark. They lost in the opener to Santa Cruz on Thursday before beating San Rafael on Friday.
Napa will have the next week off to recoup before opening Vine Valley Athletic League play on January 3rd at 7 pm against Casa Grande.
