Vintage gets offense flowing with quartet of double-figure scorers to beat Sonoma Valley, start second half of league play hot
By Kyle Foster
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
It’s nice when everything comes together like you want it to. A team can also be hard to beat when they execute the offense to near perfection.
On Tuesday night at Crusher Gym, this is exactly what Vintage did as it rolled past Sonoma Valley, 87-57, in a Vine Valley Athletic League contest.
The Crushers (7-13 overall, 4-4 VVAL) took control of the game with a 13-2 run in the third quarter, putting them up 54-38. During this time, Vintage was putting it together on both ends of the floor. They would quickly get a turnover and turn it into points on the other end.
“It was our defensive intensity,” Vintage sophomore guard Dominic Oram explained as to what led to the big run where they were able to get a sizable edge. “We had fire. We wanted to get a streak going. We wanted the game to keep going fast. We wanted the ball in our hands and not in theirs.”
One of the reasons why this was Vintage’s best performance of the season was how efficient the offense was. Nearly every time down the floor, they would get a good look, with it going in most of the time. This is something that had been missing throughout much of the season.
Because of this effort on the offensive end, the Crushers had 4 of their 5 starters in double figures for the game. This makes the offense nearly impossible to defend.
“Not to come up with excuses, but we’re starting to jell,” Vintage head coach Ben Gongora said of the offense getting going. “We were without Gabe (Correjo), Rory (Holland), and Grayson (Frye) for a big part of November (and) December, and now guys are starting to jell.”
The main beneficiary of all of this was Oram. He finished with a game-high 30 points and 4 rebounds. Oram scored 17 points in the second half of the game.
“Dom played on the freshman team last year, and I saw something in him over the summer,” Gongora explained. “So I approached him and said, ‘What do you think about coming up to varsity for the summer, and let’s just see what happens?’ And he said, ‘Let me talk to my parents, and then I’ll get back to you.’ He texted me in like an hour to say yes. Dom has been progressing, as many of these young players have been progressing. Did I think he was going to explode for 30 tonight, no. But he was feeling it. He was feeling it. Throwing a rock in the ocean he couldn’t miss tonight.”
Oram tied a school record with 8 three-pointers made in the game. He joins David Fernandez as the only player to make this many shots from deep in a game. The previous record was held by former AD Cam Neal who had made 7 shots from three-point land in a game before Fernandez did so on January 19th, 2018.
“I started off the game with a three, and after that, I just kept shooting, when the rock hit my hand,” Oram explained of his monster game. “It was just like, I just had to shoot. I had to get points for our team.”
After that, Gabe Carrejo added 22 points and 3 rebounds. The senior guard scored 12 points before halftime and made three shots from deep in the game. He also connected on 3 of 4 free throws.
Rory Holland finished the contest with 14 points, 5 rebounds, and a blocked shot. He scored 10 points in the first half and made a pair of shots from deep as well. Holland also made both free throws he had too.
Rounding out the group of scorers with double-digit points was Adar Yildiz. The junior forward finished with 10 points and 9 rebounds to come so close to a double-double in the game. Yildiz scored 6 points in the first half and made 4 of 6 shots at the line.
Evan Rosette (6 points, 7 rebounds) and Jonah Harris (5 points) also scored for Vintage in the game.
It also helped that the Crushers came into this game much more prepared than they had been the last time they played the Dragons back on January 6th. They are also into the second half of league play, which gives them an idea of what they’re facing each night. So far in the second half of the league season, Vintage has won both games.
“We focused on Sonoma as a team,” Gongora said of the approach coming into the contest. “This was the most prepared that we’ve been coming into a game. We watched film and we were a little disappointed with our performance over there at their place. And they’re well-coached. Coach (Mike) Boles had them prepared and we saw that by how they defended some of our sets. So we spent a lot of time on film. We spent a lot of time in practice, just preparing for Sonoma, which we didn’t do the first time we played them.”
Sonoma Valley (10-11, 3-4 VVAL) was able to keep the game close early. They went on a 9-0 run between the first and second quarter, which got them to within a point of Vintage at 23-22. Then, the Dragons reeled off 6 straight points to start the third quarter and get to within 5 points at 41-36. But that would be the closest they would get in the second half.
The Dragons began the league season as one of the teams to beat having gone 3-0 out of the gates. But they have now dropped 5 of their last 6 games, which includes 4 VVAL games in that span.
Vintage will be back in action on Wednesday when they visit Hercules at 7 p.m. in a non-league game. They will then have a league bye on Thursday before hosting Justin-Siena on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. Sonoma Valley will host American Canyon on Thursday at 7 pm.
In the last meetings, Sonoma Valley beat American Canyon 51-39 on January 8th and Justin-Siena beat Vintage 68-56 on January 11th.
Other VVAL games on Tuesday night saw Napa beat American Canyon, 57-50, for their first win against the Wolves since 2019. Casa Grande also beat crosstown rival Petaluma 71-41.
