It should come as no surprise that the Yuba College 49ers are one of the best teams in the state by far, but they proved it by purely walking through their three games in the Bay Valley Conference Tournament last week, winning by an average of 23 points over College of Alameda (102-86), Merritt College (97-58) and Contra Costa College (81-67), putting themselves forward for the two seed in the Northern regional of the State Championship Tournament.Just how good were the Niners during the conference tournament? They only trailed three times the whole tournament, all three times coming in the finals against Contra Costa. “We proved that when we’re a physical team, we’re really hard to beat,” assistant coach Nate Stephens said after the Merritt College semi-final game. “We’re gonna hit the film, see what we do; I think our biggest thing is, as long as we concentrate on sharing the ball, moving defensively, bumping cutters and really working the glass, I think we’re going to be a tough beat.”
Yuba was lead by sophomore wing Spencer Butterfield in all three games, who had 22 points in the win over Contra Costa, while outside threat Anthony Romero chipped in 10 and had three rebounds. Yuba as a whole totaled 37 rebounds over Contra Costa, 11 of them offensive.
Now that the Niners are in the State Championship Tournament, can they kick back and relax before Saturday’s game at home against West Valley College?
Absolutely not.
“We’ll be scouted and prepared, the other team’s gonna be scouted and prepared, we just gotta see what happens,“ head coach Doug Cornelius said.
The only team seeded higher than Yuba in the Northern regional bracket is San Francisco City College; Yuba did not face them during the regular season.
Chris Carpenter is the Print Editor for The Prospector, and is a full-time student at Yuba College, majoring in Mass Communications. Outside of the newspaper, he is an avid writer, and watches tons of Japanese wrestling (and CHIKARA, the US equivalent of Lucha Libre). He can be followed on Twitter at twitter.com/antonio_DAMAN.
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