American Canyon uses run to end of half to gain control, put together best game of season to get first league win over Napa
By Kyle Foster
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
A team’s losing record can be deceiving because its record may not be as bad as it appears. Sometimes context is necessary. It happens in sports all the time.
In Monday’s Vine Valley Athletic League contest, American Canyon showed that they are to be taken serious in the league as they rolled past Napa High, 72-35, in a game played at Messner Gym.
This was a much-needed win for the Wolves (2-11 overall, 1-1 VVAL) as they had been on a three-game losing streak coming into the game. But for most of the season, they were without football players who went on to win the CIF State 5-A championship. Guys like Jona Budu, Abdul Kates, and Cole Gholar all play big roles on the team and are just now starting to get the chemistry that had been missing with the team before they got back from football.
“It was the type of game I knew we’d been capable of all season,” American Canyon head coach Scott Hayburn said of the solid performance of his squad. “It’s felt up to this point like every time we fix one thing, two things break tonight, nothing was broke. So when everything’s firing on all cylinders the way it’s supposed to be, this is the type of team we can be, both offensively and defensively.
“A lot of the frustration up to this point is we haven’t seen that complete effort from top to bottom,” Hayburn continued. “Tonight, we got it, and the only thing I’m concerned about is bringing that same effort and energy into Wednesday’s game against Sonoma. I’m not going to overreact to this, and it would be a mistake for anyone to think that our season is suddenly turned around because of one win, but we definitely moved in the right direction.”
The game was tight until the last few minutes of the first half. As the final ticks went down in the half, American Canyon went on a 7-0 scoring run, which gave them a 9-point edge going into the break. During the second quarter, they also allowed just 10 points to gain control of the game.
“Defensive effort and cleaning up the glass,” Haybun said as to what led to the good second quarter. “We were getting hurt in a very specific way in the first quarter, trying to fix that, identifying that. I felt like we did and then taking advantage of our opportunities in transition, finishing under the basket, and knocking down some open shots. It just kind of all came together. It’s no one thing. It was multiple pieces of that puzzle that helped us build that nine-point halftime lead.”
After that, the Wolves got everything going. In the contest, they made nine shots from beyond the arc and had their offense running about as well as possible. It also helped that they had the lead to make shots a bit easier. In the second half, the Wolves outscored Napa 43-15 to gain a large margin of victory in the game.
This led American Canyon to even out the scoring in the game. Issy Jimenez, who finished as the leading scorer in the contest scored all 13 of his points in the fourth quarter and made 3 shots from three-point range.
The only other Wolves player in double figures in the game was Gabrielle Moore. He scored 9 points in the second half and made his lone free throw in the game.
Others scoring in the game for American Canyon were Justin Laron (8 points), Sergio Ruiz (7 points), Budu (6 points), Joshua Aguiluz (6 points), Tito Villanueva (4 points), Evan Santos (3 points), Alvin Livingston (3 points), Anthony Castro (2 points), Kates (2 points), and Gholar (1 point).
As for Napa (4-7, 0-2 VVAL), the night was rough. However, the lone bright spot of the whole game was that of Henry MacPherson who finished as their leading scorer in the game with 11 points. The junior worked his way into the starting five after a nice game on Friday night. He continued his scoring as he scored all 11 points in the first half. MacPherson also scored 8 points in the first quarter and made 3 shots from downtown in the game.
“He keeps working on just being more ready as a shooter,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said of MacPherson who is getting better as the season goes. “So you’re starting to see that a little bit more. We didn’t have Aiden Faughn so that’s why Henry stepped in. He played a good game. He’s just got to continue to grow. We gotta be better.”
Others scoring in the game for the Grizzlies were German Camacho (6 points, 4 rebounds), Sawyer Knect (4 points, 3 rebounds), Patricio Buoncristiani (4 points), Will Flynn (3 points, 2 rebounds, blocked shot), JJ Villegas (3 points, 1 rebound), Hunter Griffin (3 points, 1 rebound), and Gael Bazounguissa (1 point, 6 rebounds).
Both teams will continue VVAL play on Wednesday night at 7 pm. Napa will play its first league game when it visits Petaluma. Meanwhile, American Canyon will host Sonoma Valley.
In the other league games on Monday night, Sonoma Valley beat Vintage 67-59 and Casa Grande beat Petaluma 66-31.
