Justin-Siena opens up huge lead early, cruises to victory over Casa Grande

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By Kyle Foster

kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

There are some games where you just need to handle your business with ease and move on without issue. These games aren’t normally interesting, but there is a task to be done. 

In Saturday’s Vine Valley Athletic League contest, this is what the Justin-Siena girls did as they rolled past Casa Grande, 54-15, at the Dan Clark Gym. 

The Braves (10-4, 2-0 VVAL) started the game in a grand fashion. They started the contest with a huge 27-0 scoring run that spanned the first quarter and a half. 

“I think the most important thing for us is playing to our standard no matter who the opponent is,” Justin-Siena head coach Andy Bettencourt said. “Doesn’t matter if we’re playing the best team in the country or whoever else you know, a Tuesday night league game, doesn’t matter. We want to play to our standard every time we step on the floor, and that’s been the message with the girls. So tonight, I was really proud of them for coming out and playing to our level.”

Justin-Siena was able to put the game away thanks to the execution of their defense, which gave them numerous easy scoring buckets at the other end. 

“We’ve really emphasized our defensive pressure and intensity over the last couple of weeks,” Bettencourt explained. Quite frankly, when we were in San Diego, our defense wasn’t very good, and so it’s something that’s definitely been a focus of trying to improve our team is bringing our defense every night, the intensity, the focus, the technique. So really proud of the girls. We’ve really found another gear defensively, which is nice now offensively.”

But it also helped that the Braves had a trio of double-digit scorers in the game. They were paced by a pair of players with 14 points each. 

“I would say that we actually talked about it before the game, that our goal is to move the ball and get open shots because we have enough kids on this team,” Bettencourt added. “You just mentioned three kids, and neither of those two was our leading scorer in our last game. So it’s really nice to have a lot of kids that can score, and so we want to just focus on moving the ball and getting the right shot every time down the floor.”

One of them was senior Caiden Grimmer. She finished with 14 points and 2 rebounds. Grimmer also had 7 points in each half and made a pair of shots from the three-point line in the game. 

The other player with 14 points in the game was sophomore Haven Stone. The guard scored 14 points and grabbed 3 rebounds. She also scored 9 points in not just the first half but the first quarter alone. Stone also made 1 of 2 free throws in the game. 

Rounding out the trio was senior guard Dylan Zapolski. She finished with 13 points and 3 rebounds. She scored 7 points in the first half of the game.

Others scoring for Justin-Siena in the game were Katie Kelleher (8 points, 3 rebounds, blocked shot), Lauren Keller (3 points, 6 rebounds), and Payton Padowan (2 points, 3 rebounds, blocked shot). 

Justin-Siena will be back in action in VVAL play on Wednesday at 7 pm when they host Vintage. This will be a battle for the top spot in the league. 

In other league action on Saturday, American Canyon beat Sonoma Valley 53-39, and Vintage beat Petaluma 56-25.