NVC Men’s Basketball Preview: Storm looking to not only get back in postseason, but go further this winter

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By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Glenn Cortes

Kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

When you accomplish something that hadn’t been done in a while, there’s a hunger not just to do it again, but to do it better.

This is what the Napa Valley College men’s basketball team will look to do in the 2026-27 season.

Last season, the Storm went 12-17 overall with an 8-8 mark in Bay Valley Conference play. This gave them the No. 24 seed, where they lost to No. 9 seed Columbia 91-68 in the opening round of the CCCAA Northern California playoffs.

In the 2026-27 season, Napa Valley will look to not only go back to the playoffs but take the next step of winning a playoff game or two.

“We just keep working hard, taking every step every day, one day at a time, and just keep getting better,” Napa Valley College head coach Steve Ball said of the mindset after the postseason appearance. “If you look too far into the future, you’re gonna not realize that the steps that you need to take are every single day. So I’m hoping that we can have that growth mindset and continue to progress every day.”

There isn’t too much pressure to make a return trip to the postseason. But they would like to make it past the opening round.

“I feel like it’s not too much pressure on us,” NVC sophomore guard Kenny Brown said. “Like everybody, we set a goal early into the season, saying that we want to get to the playoffs this year as well, but we want to be able to make it past the first round of playoffs this year, you know, make it even a bigger accomplishment. As even me being a sophomore, you know, I want to be able to end my season, you know, and go moving forward, being able to look back, you know, and say we made it to the playoffs. We got past the first round of playoffs, you know, and we did it pretty big. That’s our goal this year. That’s my goal this year. We want to be able to win something this year.”

They will do this with a fresh new group of faces. But the Storm is anchored by a trio of returning players.

Leading the returners is Brown. Last season, he saw plenty of time off the bench. But he is now moving into a starting role this season.

“Kenny’s got an innate ability to put the ball in the basket,” Ball added. “Last year, he was our third leading scorer. He’s our leading returning scorer of the group. Made a huge impact. Played just out of necessity, mostly off the bench, but did not stop him from making an impact whenever he was in the game. We’re looking for him for some leadership, and he did a great job last year also. And hopefully, we can get him to continue to do a great job cleaning up some rebounds for us as well.”

Other returners for the Storm are AJ McCoy and Caedon Lain. So this is a very young group. Devion Watts also returns, but he appeared in just one game last season.

Abe Oushami played in 17 games last season and started once. He is back for the Storm this season, too.

But they also have a bunch of new players. One of the new freshmen is class of 2025 Napa High graduate Aiden Faughn. He sat out last year, but is ready to be a helpful bench player this season. One of the major things he brings is familiarity with the terminology since Napa ran a lot of the same types of plays in a similar offense.

“As a freshman coming in with the terminology and the verbiage, some of the things that we teach and preach are very similar,” Ball said of Faugn. Because Carson (Carattini) and I worked together for a number of years, and we have a great rapport and a great respect for one another.”

After that, there are a plethora of new freshmen. Those include Raejon Bland, Angelo Torres, D’Arion Brown, Lamar Hodges, Daniel Jones, a sophomore from Golden State Prep, Jasier Smith, Mohamed Berte, and Brandon Washington.

Before BVC play begins, the Storm will face many different challenges in their out-of-conference schedule. They’ll begin the season on the road on November 3rd with a game at West Valley in Saratoga.

After that, the Storm will play their first two home games on November 6th and 7th in the Live Like Geno Foundation tip-off. On Friday, they’ll host College of the Redwoods at 7 pm. Then on Saturday night, they’ll host Folsom Lake at 5 pm.

“It’s enormous. I mean, it’s just to get the recognition for the foundation that does so much for so many, and the recognition for Geno, who touched so many lives of young people, and many of the people playing community college basketball today began by competing at the Basketball Jones basketball camps,” Ball said of hosting the Live Like Geno tip-off that will also feature Yuba, Los Medanos, and Monterey Peninsula College.

In the non-conference, they’ll also host Santa Rosa, Ohlone, Skyline, and Delta. On the road or in tournament play, they’ll face Las Positas, Reddley, Sierra, Hartnell, and Canada.

“What I hope for us is to be able to play; it’s just tightening up everything and everybody on the same page,” Brown explained. “So when we do get into season, we’re all structured as a team. We can all know what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are, and  just go out there and play as a team.”

Before the season even began, they went to the SoCal and NorCal Jamboree and faced Gavilan in a scrimmage.

Bay Valley Conference play will start on December 17th when they host Marin at 5 pm. The first round of conference play will see the men play at 5 before switching to 7 in the second portion of the season. Yuba, Los Medanos, and Contra Costa are once again expected to be the favorites.

College of Alameda folded athletics, which means they won’t have a basketball team this winter or going forward. It also shortened the conference schedule from 16 to 14 games, and no bye either.

“Well, it’s made it harder to schedule in the preseason because we had to add a couple of games to get to our maximum total, but it’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out because now we have 14 games in conference instead of 16,” Ball pointed out. “So we have a little bit more opportunity to make your own schedule, as it were. But it’ll make things interesting because you have fewer gaps in the schedule. We don’t have a mandatory bye now, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. I don’t know. Short answer, I don’t know how that’s going to play out, but it is going to be a brand new dynamic for me. 20 years we’ve had 16 conference games, and now it’s a it’s a different different set of rules.”