Wolves hold off Panthers on the road
AmCan mostly ignores trash talk in win over Benicia
The Benicia High basketball team talked the talk. The Panthers’ opponent on Thursday -American Canyon -- walked the walk.
Although the two squads do not compete in the same league anymore, the game early on was intense and featured more trash talk than a recycling center. The Wolves, for the most part, decided not to partake in it. In the end it worked to their advantage in a 7158 road win.
With a little over a minute remaining in the contest, Benicia (45) fought back into a game that it trailed for most of the night, making a once 20-point deficit into just a six-point game at 6256. Sadly for the Panther faithful, a foul by Benicia followed by a technical foul by Gio Shaw gave Wolves guard Oliver Aandahl four free throws. He hit all of them.
Seconds later Aandahl drove to the hoop for a layup and in less time it takes for a Ramones song to hit a chorus, American Canyon now led by 12 points instead of six and sealed the victory.
“These games are always high energy, a lot of atmosphere. Their
kids come out, our kids come out and the gym gets rowdy. Their is some stuff that goes on off the court that throws fuel to the rivalry a little bit,” American Canyon head coach Scott Rayburn said. “What we explain to the kids was the team that plays with emotion. If you buy into that and run be aggressive, if you’re victorious because of your emotions, you’re going to lose because of your emotions. We have to be the steady team.”
American Canyon senior Gabriel Patrick said his coach as well as a previous big game helped prepare the Wolves (4-6) for the chippy environment.
“We’ve been in this situation before in a game with Vacaville and we learned from that,” Patrick said. “We know we can’t play out of emotion. We need to play steady and play our game and not let the crowd and other things affect our game.”
Benicia senior Riley Dykstra, who scored nine points and fouled out in the last minute of the contest, admitted the Panthers need to worry less about the talking and off-the-court issues and more about the actual game.
“We need to put all that behind us,” Dkystra said. “We can’t worry about the off the court noise. We need to focus on what’s between these lines.”
The Wolves led 14-12 after eight minutes as Patrick especially played well in the first period with seven points. The Wolves’ seven made free throws also helped give them an advantage.
“They were fouling so I got to the free throw line a lot,” Patrick said. “I had a lot of layups and easy getting to the basket any time I wanted.”
In the second quarter American Canyon made its move with a 10-1 run in the final three minutes. Surprisingly, Benicia did not call a timeout to slow down the damage and the Wolves went into intermission with a 31-21 lead. The run by American Canyon was sparked by 3-pointers by Aandahl and Maximilian Parmigiani as well as layups from Patrick and Khai Curry.
The Wolves kept their foot on the gas pedal midway through the third quarter with an 18-2 run highlighted by eight points from Aandahl as well as five more from Noah Simmons. With less than two minutes remaining in the third quarter the Wolves had built a 53-33 lead as Benicia looked frustrated with constant turnovers.
Just when Benicia looked ready to quit it got back into the game thanks to a 6-0 run with every point coming from Shaw, including a 3-pointer in the corner to make it 53-39.
“Coach had us run a halfcourt press which kind of sped them up,” Dykstra said. “I don’t know if they saw it coming because we ran it so late, but that kind of put them on their heels real fast. But going to the fourth quarter they kind of adapted to it I guess.”
Benicia, thanks in large part to Gavin Lane’s nine points in the fourth quarter, got the lead down to six points at 58-52 midway through the final period. However, Benicia couldn’t take advantage as it struggled from the free throw line, missing five straight at one point. The technical foul and six points by Aandahl that followed a few moments later was even more damaging to the Panthers.
Although Aandahl was clutch late in the game on the way to 22 total points (17 in the second half), there was a point he seemed to get mixed up in the extra curricular activities and was warned by Rayburn with a stern, “Oliver, do I need to take you out?”
“It’s all about trust,” Rayburn said. “With Oliver and a couple of the others it doesn’t matter what type of the game he’s had up to that point, there is nobody I trust more in the world with the ball more. He makes play after play after play for us. I demonstrate that trust to him and in return he demonstrates that trust back to me. He was this close to a technical foul late in the game that could have cost us, I trusted he would keep his emotions under control and the result was him knocking down four free throws and then the layup to ice it.”
Dykstra said the Panthers will attempt to improve with league play right around the corner.
“Failure is a better teacher than a win,” the Panther guard said. “This loss brought us closer together as a team and we’ll be ready for the next one.”