Petaluma makes key shots all night, goes on run to begin overtime to stun Napa, get first league win
By Kyle Foster
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When you have opportunities, you must seize them. Failure to do so will hurt you later. You also can’t judge a team by their record.
On Thursday night at Messner Gym, Petaluma put together its best effort of the season, stunning Napa High 54-53 in overtime and claiming its first Vine Valley Athletic League win.
The Trojans (2-20 overall, 1-8 VVAL) won this game by making key shots all night long. One of these times came as regulation was almost over with Petaluma up 49-48 and Antione Smith made a deep shot from three to give the visitors a 4-point lead. In the contest, they also made their fair share of tough shots to help the cause as well.
It also helped that Petaluma began the extra frame by going on a 4-0 run to immediately take a two-possession lead.
This is a big win for the Trojans. After all, they were riding a 16-game losing streak coming into the contest and hadn’t won since early December. It’s also the first league win for new head coach Johnny McEvoy. This also shows that the storyline of on any given night one team can beat the other in the very even VVAL.
As for Napa (9-12, 4-5 VVAL), they began the game on a nice start. After giving up the opening bucket, the Grizzlies ran off 12 straight points and had an early double-digit lead midway through the opening quarter.
Napa took this lead thanks to sharing the ball on offense and playing good defense on the other end, where they held Petaluma to just one shot down the court to begin the game.
“We’ve been trying to do some things just consistently with our defense, just putting them in a position of being on their heels and us on our toes,” Napa High head coach Carson Carattini said of the good start to the game. “So starting from that end and getting out and getting the ball moving. We did that early. We didn’t do it consistently enough.”
After trailing 39-37 through three frames, Napa also found a way to claw back and force the extra period of play. They even came back from a 4-point deficit in the final minutes of regulation and rallied to force the overtime period.
“That’s the expectation from our guys, and part of our culture is that we’re going to play hard from start to finish,” Carattini explained of the late rally to go to the extra four-minute period. “So I think there’s never any point where they’re going to give up on themselves, and I’m not going to give up on them. And as a group, we want to play hard for the entire game, from start to finish. So they were never going to quit on themselves.”
In the final moments of the game, the Grizzlies had a chance to win the game. They were able to get a good look at a layup and missed the shot. This was a theme of the game as they had plenty of looks in the game and missed them.
“There’s a handful of things there,” Carattini explained of the things that cost them in this one. “Obviously, some missed layups, some miscommunications, defensively, just understanding our match-up and where to be. It could have been any number of things, lots of things could’ve went one way or the other.”
Leading Napa in the game was Gael Bazounguissa. The senior guard finished with a team-leading 20 points and 7 rebounds. Bazounguissa also scored 11 points in the second half of the game and made 3 of 4 free throws in the game. He also made some big shots throughout to keep the Grizzlies in the game.
“I think he’s been pretty clutch,” Carattini explained of the senior’s clutch ability all year. “He’s had six games with over 20. He had 26 the other night at American Canyon. He’s an excellent player. Obviously, he missed that one there at the end, and that’s tough.”
Also having a nice game was Willy Flynn. The junior forward added 11 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots. Flynn scored 7 points in the opening half and made 1 of 2 shots from the line in the contest. Over the last few weeks, Flynn has been more of a catalyst for the offense too.
“He’s starting to figure things out,” Carattini said of Flynn’s growth. “We’d love to see him be aware and aggressive throughout the game. I think there’s still times where I’m just trying to encourage him to be on his toes and be aggressive and go make some things happen. So you’re starting to see that more and more often and that’s what you want from a player that’s been in the program for a while now.”
Others scoring for the Grizzlies in the game were Aiden Faughn (9 points, 3 rebounds), Patricio Buocristiani (5 points), Cris Rendon (3 points, 4 rebounds, blocked shot), Henry MacPherson (3 points, 2 rebounds), and German Camacho (2 points, 5 rebounds).
While this is a tough loss for Napa, the beauty of the current league schedule is that there isn’t much time to think about it. After all, they have a 7 pm start against first-place Casa Grande on Saturday to get back on track.
“That’s the beauty of our schedule right now,” Carattini said of being back in action again on Saturday. “We’ve been playing three games a week for a few number of weeks now. So the nice thing is we don’t have to worry about lingering on it or having to wait to play again. We’re going to get one day to prepare for Casa and get back at it on Saturday.”
Petaluma will visit Sonoma Valley on Saturday at 5:30 pm in league play as well.
In the previous meetings back on January 11th, Casa Grande beat Napa 61-37 and Sonoma Valley beat Petaluma 61-34.
In other VVAL games on Thursday, Casa Grande rolled by Justin-Siena 72-45 and American Canyon beat Sonoma Valley 72-67. With the league tournament approaching in two weeks, every win is important to help seeding and the league winner getting a bye in the quarterfinals.
