Napa Valley gets offense humming in first half, gets key run to start second half to beat Solano in best performance of season
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When the offense flows, the game can just take care of itself. In sports, these nights tend to happen.
On Friday night at Storm Gym, this is what happened in the first game of the doubleheader as Napa Valley beat rival Solano, 91-73 in Bay Valley Conference play.
It also helped that Napa Valley went on a nice 7-0 run out of the half to push the lead to 60-48, their first double-digit lead of the game. They did this by fixing some defensive issues that had been hurting them earlier in the game.
“Well, I think defensively, we took away the variables,” Napa Valley College head coach Steve Ball said of the second-half adjustment they made. “We had an if this, then that situation with our with our press. So if their big man’s taking it out, then this happens, if their big man isn’t, then this happens. Too many variables create miscommunication, right? So we just took that off.”
The Storm (4-22, 3-11 BVC) were able to get the offense going and humming all night long thanks to a fast and frantic pace where they were making the best decisions on nearly every possession. After all, they had four players end the night in double-digits.
On the offensive end, the Storm also had a quartet of guys in double figures scoring the ball. Benefiting from the offense’s good output was sophomore guard Chris Farrington who finished with a game-leading 30 points and 7 rebounds. He scored 23 points in the first half and made 7 of 9 free throws in the game.
“Honestly, I felt great tonight,” Farrington explained. “I kind of been in the slump personally for my team and just to have a great game and to finish the season strong as I can, it feels good because my guys, they never stop believing in me.”
Farrington also did most of his damage close to the bucket as he scored 10 field goals from there in the contest.
“He feels comfortable and they do defensively, their on-ball defense, other pick and roll defense is it takes away something, but every, every choice you make defensively, takes away something,” Ball explained of Farrington’s game and how it happened. “It’s a sliding scale, right? It gives something else up. So they do what’s called drop coverage, and their big man drops and doesn’t show, doesn’t hedge, doesn’t slow the ball at all. So then he’s able to get a bigger, slower guy back on his heels, and he can get downhill.”
Also finishing in double digits to help the cause was Naajy Bynum-Bey who finished with 20 points and 7 rebounds. The freshman scored 11 points in the first half and made all 4 free throws.
“When he plays with energy, he’s the X factor,” Ball pointed out. “When he brings positive energy and at both ends of the floor, he’s always bringing that in our successful outings.”
Hassan Flemming aided in the effort in the game. He ended the night with 10 points and 4 rebounds. Flemming scored 8 points in the first half of the game as well.
“He’s got such an amazing elevation on his mid-range jump shot that there is no way that their lack of length on him could contest him high enough,” Ball continued. “It was free-throw line jumper, free-throw line jumper, jumper from the baseline one after another and he can shoot that really well.”
Rounding out the quartet of double-digit scoring in the game for Napa Valley was Jayden Robinson. He finished with 10 points and 6 rebounds. The freshman made a pair of shots from downtown and scored 7 points in the second half.
“It makes my job easy when I got other guys contributing, getting buckets because it takes the pressure off of me,” Farrington added. “Just seeing my guys do good, it makes me happy, and I enjoy it.”
Others scoring in the game for the Storm were E’Jay Rogers (5 points, 1 rebound), Jerard Jackson (4 points), Jamari Taylor (4 points), Nate Broome (3 points, 6 rebounds, blocked shot), Caedom Lain (3 points, 2 rebounds), and CJ Mitchell (3 points, 1 rebound).
Napa Valley will end the season next week with a pair of games next week. They’ll visit Marin on Tuesday at 5:30 and then host Yuba-Marysville on Thursday for Sophomore night.
