Despite a strong effort, Antioch uses key overtime period and third quarter to beat Vintage in nail biter
By Kyle Foster
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Some games in a season will slip through your fingers and sting. Those are the ones you have to find a way to regroup and return from.
On Thursday afternoon at Crusher Gym, Antioch won a nail-biter over Vintage, 63-56, in an overtime non-league contest.
The Panthers (3-9) won the game by outscoring Vintage 10-3 in the final four minutes of extra time. They also went on a 6-0 run to begin the last four minutes. The thing is the game going to an extra period was just another step in the right direction for the Crushers.
Antioch also took control of the game in the third quarter when they outscored the Crushers 17-6 to take a 39-34 lead after that frame.
“Yeah, just for the fact that we made it to overtime,” Vintage head coach Ben Gongora explained of the progress of getting a game to come down to the end. “The coach in me feels we shouldn’t have gone to overtime. We should have pulled it out and won and won the game, but that’s showing improvement that we’re still in the fight with the last second in the game, and we just weren’t able to put it together in overtime.”
The Panthers were led in the game by Devin Simes who finished with a game-high of 19 points. Dereon Ourm-Blackman also had 17 points for Antioch.
Vintage (0-8) had many moments in the game where it looked like they were headed towards their first win of the season. One of those came in the first quarter when they began the frame on a 7-0 run and the offense was running on all cylinders.
“I think we came out and popped Antioch in the mouth,” Gongora said of the fast start his squad had. “I think with many teams that are going to play Vintage are going to get excited because we haven’t won a game. So they think we’re going to be a cupcake and an easy out if you will. If we play like the first half, we won’t be an easy out.”
In that first quarter, they also hounded the Panthers with their half-court trap. This trap also worked later in the fourth quarter when Vintage went on a 10-1 run to tie the game at 53.
“You look at some of our bad decisions and turnovers, and you look at some of Antioch’s bad decisions and turnovers, I don’t think we can take all the credit,” Gongora said as to how his team was able to tie the game up and force the extra period. “It was just our defense. Conversely, I don’t think their defense takes all the credit. When we made some knucklehead passes, we got some momentum on the defensive end, and we were able to get a little run. Basketball is a game of runs, and it was a great little run. And then we had some crucial turnovers that proved to be costly.”
On the way to knotting up the score, they also ran off 8 straight points to get within striking distance.
Another thing that helped the Crushers in the game was their team-high scoring Gabe Carrejo who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds for a double-double effort. He scored 10 points in the second half and made three shots from downtown in the game. He also went 4 of 6 from the line in the game while opening up the offense with his court vision in the game.
“Gabe has been great,” Gongora pointed out of Correjo who played his first game after having to sit the first seven games. “Gabe has made me a better coach. I appreciate his fight. Gabe is a truth speaker. Sometimes kids are a little sensitive when he gives them feedback, but Gabe is very passionate, and Gabe has put a tremendous amount of effort and dedication into playing basketball. So this actually means more to Gabe than it does to some other players, and it’s been awesome coaching him. He has improved the play of his teammates, but everybody has to step up a little.”
Anthony Wilmert also had a nice game. He finished the game with 13 points and 5 rebounds, and he scored 8 of those points in the first half.
“ I’m really, really proud of Anthony for his progress,” Gongora continued. “I like him a lot. He’s a man of few words, but I feel a connection to him. He’s probably one of the unknowns of ultimately, how their basketball career will end at Vintage because he has a high ceiling. There’s so much more that he is going to be able to do that that he hasn’t even touched on yet.”
Others scoring in the game for the Crushers were Danny Ward (8 points, 6 rebounds, blocked shot), Rory Holland (6 points, 4 rebounds, blocked shot), Adar Yildiz (5 points, 12 rebounds), and Evan Rosette (4 points, 1 rebound).
This game begins a stretch of 6 games in 9 days for Vintage as well. They will play the back end of a home back-to-back on Saturday at 2 pm against Elite-Vallejo. They will host Mt. Diablo-Concord at 3 PM on Monday before hosting Petaluma in their VVAL opener on January 3rd at 7 PM.
