Justin-Siena shoots lights out from deep, jumps out to huge lead early to beat Kelseyville in playoff opener
By Kyle Foster
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When a team doesn’t miss from the three-point line, their offense is impossible to stop. There’s not much you can do when every shot that is taken goes down. The Golden State Warriors used to bury opponents this way.
In Saturday night’s CIF North Coast Section Division 4 quarterfinal, this is what the No. 1 seed Justin-Siena boys did as they overwhelmed No. 9 Kelseyville, 91-37, in a game played at Clark Gym.
From the start of the first quarter, Justin-Siena (24-3) looked every bit like to top seed from the start. The Braves jumped out to a 21-0 lead that lasted until the first quarter was halfway over. This was a focus after having a week off as well.
“Well, we didn’t want to come out rusty, because we haven’t played in a week,” Justin-Siena senior guard Nick Jeramaz said of the emphasis on the fast start. “So we wanted to come out and show our dominance to them.”
In the first half, the Braves shot lights out from beyond the arc. After all, through the first half they had hit 11 shots from there. For the game, they finished with a whopping 19 shots from deep.
“Well, we’ve shot the three well all season,” Justin-Siena head coach George Nessman explained. “We’re over 45% as a team, and 40 is a benchmark of very good. So we’ve definitely shot three effectively all season long and tonight, we just made a lot of them. I mean, we’re just making them and I know that’s hard on the opponent. You know, what are you going to do?”
They also used ball-pressure defense to force multiple turnovers and extend the lead.
“We really wanted to put pressure on them picking up full court because we don’t really normally pick up full court,” Jeramaz pointed out. “But we wanted to do that to jump out to that big lead too. So we just wanted to just pick up full court and put pressure on them.”
In the game, Jeramaz finished with a game-leading 29 points and 2 rebounds. He scored 20 points in the first half and made his lone free throw in the game.
“We had this whole week off to practice,” Jeramaz said. “So we’ve really nailed down all of our plays and I feel like all those screens that my teammates set for me, were just there for me and I just ran off them and I was open.”
On top of all that, VVAL all-leaguer made a whopping 7 shots from the three-point line, 6 of which came in the first quarter.
“I see Nick make shots like this almost every day in practice,” Nessman said of Jeramaz. “I mean, he’s a phenomenal shooter. He works really hard on his game and is really smart on his game and he really understands how to play. That’s part of the way he gets open so much as people are paying attention to him, they know what he can do and he finds ways to get open because he’s relentless in terms of his effort on the offensive end.”
This was also a rematch from December 28th when Justin-Siena rolled to an 83-27 win.
It also helped that Jaden Washington was hard to stop as well. In the game, he finished with 27 points and 3 rebounds. Washington scored 19 points in the first half, with 10 coming in the second quarter.
Washington also made 7 shots from the three-point line as well.
“We complement each other so well,” Jeramaz explained. “I feel like like, we can go inside, we go outside, we go mid-range. Like it’s really hard to stop both of us and like tonight we had both had really good nights and some nights just one of us some nights both of us. It has to be always one of us at least.”
The game had a running clock in the fourth quarter after Josh Madayag made a shot from just beyond half-court as the buzzer sounded to give Justin-Siena a 76-35 lead through three quarters. Madayag finished with 8 points and 2 rebounds that all came in the second half.
Others scoring in the game for the Braves were Dallas Logwood (8 points, 4 rebounds), Chase Briskovich (5 points, 3 rebounds), Asa Hightower (5 points, 1 rebound), Xiano Ortega (2 points, 2 rebounds), Justin Mangelson (2 points, 1 rebound), and Armani Vargas (2 points, 1 rebound).
The win keeps up a streak of consistency for Justin-Siena as well. This will now be their third straight trip to the semifinals where they will host No. 5 seed McKinleyville who beat No. 4 seed Arcata 49-45 on Saturday. You can view the updated bracket here.
It also means another trip to the CIF State playoffs. This is a goal they had at the beginning of the season.
“It means so much and just being there with all my teammates, because this year is like a new team,” Jeramaz said of going back to the state playoffs. “It’s a new experience for me too in a way. It’s just been fun and I enjoy going to state every year.”
On top of that, Nessman is happy to have both basketball teams playing late in the season.
“Our girls’ team is excellent this year,” said Nessman, who is also the athletic director. “ And they’re going to be I think, even better next year. It’s a fun thing for both teams to be qualified for the state tournament. It isn’t an easy accomplishment to do and it’s great to see the girls have the season they’re having and be rewarded with the birth in the state tournament.”
Scoring for Kelseyville (20-10) in the game was Gene Holdenried (13 points), Kyle Watkins (9 points), Max Hommer (6 points), Sebastian Chavez (4 points), Ryder Leary (2 points), and Diego Lopez (2 points).
