Napa vaults out to early lead, gets scoring from everyone to beat Fremont Christian in Denny Lewis Invitational opener
By Kyle Foster
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
There are some games when things come easy. It’s nice when it’s in the first round of a tournament.
During the 49th annual Denny Lewis Invitational Tournament at Napa’s Messner Gym, this was the case for the host as they rolled past Fremont Christian, 83-18, in the event’s opening round.
The Grizzlies (1-2) quickly jumped out to a 24-0 lead before Fremont Christian even scored in the game.
The victory gets Napa in the win column after facing some good Bay Area teams in California and College Park to begin the season.
“You know, it’s always nice to win basketball games,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said of getting in the win column. “I think we just want to challenge ourselves all the time. Results aside, we want to just continually work on playing our best basketball.”
With the win, they’ll now face one of the best teams Northern California has to offer in Dublin who beat Santa Rosa 91-48 in another opener on Thursday.
“That’s a perennial Open Division state title contender,” Carattini pointed out about their next opponent. “I think when I came in here, that was something that I wanted to aspire to. Obviously, at Napa High, we’re, we’re going to make the best out of what we got. So it’s just continually trying to build to a level of excellence. I think our, you know, we’ve gotten to a point where our culture is very important. So we want to, you know, aspire to play the best basketball that we can. So getting an opportunity to play an Open Division type state title contender is just a chance for us to test ourselves and see what we really made of, and get an opportunity to play one of the best teams in the state.”
They did this by utilizing their full-court press, which allowed them to make many easy layups on the other end of the floor.
Napa also was able to attack in whatever way they wanted on offense in the game. After all, they were able to score from all over the floor in the game.
“I think that’s something we’ve been working on all off-season is the kind of looks we want to get,” Carattini said. “We’re a more physical team than we were last year. We’re a little bit bigger, so we want to impose our will. So that was just something that, you know, we wanted to make sure we did.”
The main beneficiary of this was Cris Rendon who finished with a game-high of 22 points and 7 rebounds in the game. The junior guard scored all of his points on layups and did the majority of his scoring in the first half where he had 12 points.
“Cris plays hard,” Carattini explained. “He’s a good athlete. He gets after it. He knows how to go get the ball. He can put it in the basket. So we just want to see him playing hard and making smart decisions when he gets his opportunities. You know, he can make plays. So we’re excited to see him have some success and just keep getting better, and make the most out of the minutes that he gets when he gets those opportunities.”
Also finishing in double figures in the game was Henry MacPherson. The junior finished the night with 14 points and 3 rebounds. He made two shots from beyond the arc and scored 8 points in the first half of the game.
Hunter Griffin finished the game with a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds. He scored most of his points in the first half, where he scored 7 points.
Rounding out the double-digit scorers for the Grizzlies was Tideus Chaidez. He scored 10 points and grabbed 3 rebounds in the game.
Others scoring for Napa were Will Flynn (6 points, 4 rebounds), Gael Bazounguissa (6 points, 2 rebounds), JJ Villegas (5 points), Aiden Faughn (4 points), Sawyer Knect (3 points), and Drew Herbert (2 points, 3 rebounds). This means that everyone available scored for Napa in the game.
“Our guys work their tails off every day, and they worked their tails off all off-season,” Carattini said of all his players scoring in the game. “So anytime I get a chance to reward them with playing time is a great thing, especially those guys who don’t get out there as much as you know, our top rotation guys. So they’ve all earned the opportunity to play, and so it’s always great when they get that chance.”
