Wildcats hang on for wild victory
Wood grabs upper hand in tight league race with dramatic win over Vacaville
Will C. Wood High boys basketball coach Mark Wudel had a momentary flashback to the 2017-18 season when Vacaville’s Zack Perlstein hit two gamewinning buckets in the waning seconds to beat his team.
Fortunately for Wudel, Perlstein now plays for Cal State East Bay. Also fortunately for the Wildcats, Brayden Kamman’s 3-point attempt did not connect at the buzzer, giving Wood a heart-stopping 5956 win in Monticello Empire
League play at Harold Youngblood Gym.
With five seconds left on the clock, Wood center Landon Seaman made the front end of a 1-and-1 situation. He missed the second, however, with Vacaville grabbing the rebound and Myron Amey finding Kamman open on the right wing. The ball got a little bit of the backboard and the rim but rolled out as the buzzer sounded.
“Most of our players shoot (free throws) fairly well,” Wudel said. “We have a few times when we are bad but other times we are really good. He made one of them so at worst, it was going to be a tie. I kept looking out looking for Zack Perlstein and wondering if he was going to get us.”
The Wildcats withstood an outstanding shooting game from Amey, a senior swingman, who finished with a game-high 28 points on 11 of 15 shooting and knocked down five 3-pointers. Kamman, a junior guard, was exceptional too with 22 points as hit six 3’s, including three in the fourth quarter.
“They are both great shooters,” said Vacaville head coach Duane Kamman, whose team has lost three straight to the Wildcats. “We got to get a little bit more from other kids. We just have to tighten up on defense. We had some rotations that we botched. We have to do a better job on that. Sometimes we’d gamble on defense for whatever reason and that’s when (Wood) would get a couple layups.”
The Wildcats (16-5, 3-1) got their usual solid play from Seaman, who finished with 13
points, including five in the final quarter. Seaman had a big steal on another Vacaville possession late in the fourth quarter even though his team couldn’t add on during the possession. Senior guard Izayah Ebuen had 14 points and sophomore forward Krishna Clay had 12 points while junior post Nem Drca added 10 points and six boards.
Drca was especially hot in the first quarter when he scored six of his points. The game was tied 8-8 but two Drca buckets ignited an 11-4 spurt the rest of the period as the Wildcats led 19-12.
The Bulldogs (13-6, 2-2), however, got back into the game with Amey and Brayden Kamman combining for four long balls in a 12-6 run, closing the deficit to 25-24 with 2:34 left in the half. Vacaville looked like it might go into the locker room with a lead after a steal and layup from Amey, but Seaman made a reverse shot along the baseline at the buzzer to tie the game 29-all.
The two teams traded buckets through the early portion of the third quarter before Wood scored four straight points in the final minute — a runner from Ebuen and two foul shots from Tyrell Grady (eight points) — to lead 48-40 with a minute left. The Bulldogs got the final basket of the quarter when Nick French set up Amey for a 3 as they trailed just 48-43.
Vacaville was down just one point at 54-53 after a 3-pointer from Brayden Kamman and another Kamman long ball got the Bulldogs to 58-56 with 1:56 left. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, that was as close as they would get. They forced a shot clock violation and a missed shot from Wood in the last minute but they couldn’t convert themselves.
Wudel acknowledged that Amey is a difficult matchup.
“He’s a great athlete,” the coach said. “We did a good job on him at times in the first quarter but then we didn’t execute as well as we should have, but we didn’t really get that much of a chance to practice. We were coming off the game against Vanden and then yesterday at practice, we only had about half the team because the other half were sick. I’m just glad they were able to play tonight.”
The league race featured a four-way tie for first place heading into the night. Now Wood and Vanden are tied for first place with Vacaville and Rodriguez just a game back, Both coaches expected a dogfight (no pun intended) the rest of the way.
“This is probably one of the best leagues in Northern California right now with Vanden, Wood and us … ,” Duane Kamman said. “Plus it’s not like Fairfield or Rodriguez are weak. We expect a battle every single day. We didn’t really bring it (on Tuesday) against Fairfield. We were absolutely flat. We have to take care of games like that because in games like this, if we fall a little short, it doesn’t hurt as bad.”
Vacaville won the junior varsity game 66-44.