Vintage overcomes rough first half with strong second half effort to grind out victory over Pioneer

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By Kyle Foster

kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

Some games can certainly be a little easier on the eyes than others. But if you can win when you’re not playing your best, that’s a good sign of a team that has some grit to it. 

On Monday night in Crusher Gym, this is what the Vintage girls basketball team did as they narrowly defeated Pioneer of Woodland, 40-38, in a non-league game. 

The Crushers (5-1) found themselves behind in the game after a very rough first half in which they struggled to get anything going on offense despite playing good enough defense to hang around. Part of this has to do with the fact that they had a week off from games. 

“I think that we talked we were coming off of a break, and so we knew that it was going to be kind of a rough first half, and just playing through the mistakes, keeping our head up,” Vintage head coach Hannah Newman said. “Knowing that we can make shots, we can finish the layups so we can do all the things that we know we can do, and just wasn’t happening for us in the first half. I think I’ve talked about this before. We want to play with intensity and with lots of pressure.  Got into some foul trouble in the first half as well, which kind of hurts us, and we were luckily able to bounce back in the second half.” 

But once the third quarter started, Vintage started to play much better. After all, they held a 29-28 lead after that from outsourcing Pioneer 16-11 and using their trap defense to force turnovers. 

“It was more the change of the mindset because I feel like everyone had the mentality of thinking, ‘Oh, so we can do this, we can change the defense.’  And then for offense, it was more like to see the open looks,” Vintage senior guard Luna Aguilar-Loera said of what changed in the third quarter. “Keep it slower because I feel like we were rushing a lot. So after that, we changed the pace.” 

However, it took some key shots down to stretch to hold on and win the game. This is what the Crushers did. 

The biggest factor in the second half for Vintage was Aguilar-Loera, who took over the contest when it mattered. She also ended the night as the Crushers’ leading scorer with 16 points and 6 rebounds. Aguilar-Loera also scored 11 points in the second half and made a pair of shots from the three-point line in the game.     

“I think that as she’s played through this program, she realizes how much trust we have in her, and I think that down the stretch, she knew she was not missing,” Newman added on Aguilar-Loera’s second half, where she took over. “So she needed to take it into her own hands and finish out the ball game for us. And it’s just exciting to watch her in her last high school year make these types of games fun and exciting, and be able to walk away with a team win is really important.”

She also knew she had to take over after the rough start to the game. 

“For me, it was more the score,” Aguilar-Loera said. “It gets me stressed about it, that we can beat the team, but we’re not trying our best or hardest. So after the halftime, I put in my mind that we have like to score no matter what. So I try to go and see the open looks, and try to pass to the people who were open.” 

After that, Vintage didn’t have any player score in double-figures. The normal players who supply the offense had off nights. 

Others scoring in the game for the Crushers were Samantha Kennedy (5 points, 3 rebounds), Kennley Price (4 points, 3 rebounds), Brooklyn Perez (4 points, 1 rebound), Ashley Gerenser (4 points), Sophia Bonetti (3 points, 4 rebounds), Riley Morrison (2 points, 6 rebounds), and Kaia Sidhu (2 points, 3 rebounds). 

This win should be a boost, too, after battling out without playing their best game and getting the win.

“I feel like this is a big opportunity for us to see that if we really push ourselves forward and we really give our best, we can score even more than we did today,” Aguilar-Loera added. “Play our hardest every single game. Start playing really hard from the beginning, so we don’t have to struggle after halftime, because that was a stressful game.”  

Vintage will be back in action on Thursday night at 7 pm when they visit Wood in Vacaville.