Los Medanos narrowly edged the Napa Valley College men’s basketball team, 87-80, on Wednesday night.

“I think we just got lucky and made shots,” Los Medanos coach Derek Domenichelli said. “They’re very well-coached, Napa has a phenomenal coach in Steve Ball, their players play hard, they’re competitive, they run great stuff. We just got lucky down the stretch, we made free throws, and we made some big shots.”

Napa Valley (5-22 overall, 3-12 Bay Valley Conference) held multiple leads throughout the half, but once the Mustangs (18-9, 11-4 BVC) deployed their full-court press they gained the upper hand and pulled away.

“That’s the first time we’ve scored 80 and lost,” Napa Valley College coach Steve Ball said. “It’s the first time we’ve scored over 72 and lost I think. I don’t think the offensive side of the basketball was our problem. Yeah, we missed some stuff, but we’ll take 80 every night, and we’ll win some games. But, we didn’t defend that well. We just had too many lapses where we didn’t help the helper very well.”  

“I think we just got some fresh legs in there with some guys off the bench and we got the tempo going a little bit faster than they wanted it I think,” Domenichelli explained. “We wanted to play. We wanted the game to be in the 80s. We didn’t want it to be in the 60s, but to give Napa credit they hung tough and they could’ve easily won this game tonight. But, to give our guys credit they were mentally tough at the last six minutes of that game, a tight game to make big shots and to make big free throws.”

Another thing gave the Storm trouble was the fact that Los Medanos had three players score 14 points or more.

Raazhel Watkins led LMC with 19 points on the night, while Shane Landon added 15, and Marcus Oducado scored 14.

“20 (Watkins) is a guy that makes them go. We held him to nine (points) last time, and then the next couple games he had 26, 28, 24, 16, so he can score the basketball. He’s a tough lefty to guard,” Ball said. “We tried to limit his touches in the second half, but then 11 (Oducado) made some good shots.”  

As for Napa, Braxton Adderly led the way with 16 points and four rebounds. Tomas Gomez-Espana and Malcom Bracy added 13 points each as well. All of Bracy’s points came in the second half. He also grabbed three rebounds, while Gomez-Espana brought in five.

Both teams will have their regular-season finales on Feb. 22, Los Medanos will host Contra Costa in the battle of Contra Costa County at 7:30 p.m.