Looking for its first league victory of the year, the Live Oak
High boys basketball team found it against neighboring rival Gilroy
last night. After trailing at halftime, host LO rallied for a 44-34
win over the Mustangs at Live Oak High. The Acorn boys
’ victory salvaged a doubleheader split for host Live Oak on its
Homecoming night after the Acorn girls dropped a 59-40 decision to
Gilroy in the opener.
Looking for its first league victory of the year, the Live Oak High boys basketball team found it against neighboring rival Gilroy last night.
After trailing at halftime, host LO rallied for a 44-34 win over the Mustangs at Live Oak High.
The Acorn boys’ victory salvaged a doubleheader split for host Live Oak on its Homecoming night after the Acorn girls dropped a 59-40 decision to Gilroy in the opener.
LO’s Homecoming Queen and King, Ruby Sandoval and Marius Layus, were announced between the two games.
Trailing 20-17 at the half after a turnover-plagued second quarter, LO shaped up its game in the second half.
“Coach (Brett Paolucci) said slow down and keep playing our game at the half,” said Acorn center Kevin Toombs.
Apparently, the pep talk worked. Live Oak held GHS to just 14 points in the second half.
“You’ve got to give credit to their ‘D’,” said Mustangs head coach Bud Ogden, whose team falls to 0-4 in the TCAL, 11-11 overall.
Live Oak is now 1-3 in league play, 10-8 overall.
Acorn senior Matt van Keulen, who had a team-high 13 points, hit a long bucket with 3:15 to go in the third quarter, giving Live Oak its first lead of the contest, and. the Acorns never looked back, playing tough defense down the stretch and hitting all the key free throws as they won going away.
“It hurts,” said Mustang senior forward Adam Moon, who had 11 points, mostly from the paint off offensive rebounds. “For the seniors, we’ve never won in Morgan Hill since the eighth grade. We really wanted this.”
The final score was somewhat misleading. Gilroy trailed by just three points with a little over a minute to go in the game. But Live Oak’s Mubarik Abdullahi hit a huge shot from the right baseline with 1:14 left, stretching the Acorns’ lead to 39-34. The sophomore guard had 10 points off the bench for Live Oak.
Meanwhile, in the early game, the Acorn girls couldn’t overcome a devastating Gilroy full-court press and the Mustangs’ height advantage.
“They’re so much bigger inside – we’re out there trying to trap them and they figured out how to get the ball inside,” LO coach Jeff Perkins said. “Overall, I thought the girls played well. It was an emotional game.”
GHS coach Kari Williams said the plan was to use both a height and speed advantage in the game.
“I thought we’d be able to control the tempo and use our height on the boards, and we did that,” she said.
After LO used a scrappy defense to slow down the Gilroy offensive attack early on, the Mustang press began shutting down the Acorn offense late in the first quarter. Gilroy held LO without a field goal for nearly eight minutes from late in the first quarter until Acorn center Afshawn Chakamian’s bucket with 1:30 left in the half.
Meanwhile, the Mustangs began tossing the ball inside to center Amanda Link, who had eight of her 12 points in the first half against the smaller Acorns. During the defensive rush, Gilroy sprinted to a 21-7 lead to take control of the game. The Mustangs led 30-18 at the half.
In the second half, LO scored the first basket to pull within 10 points of the lead but Gilroy answered with an 8-0 run to extend the lead.
LO got to within 10 points once more, on Acorn Sarah Goodere’s hoop to cap a 7-0 run with 1:26 left in the third quarter.
But the Mustangs rallied to outscore LO 12-2 over the next 3:44 to take an insurmountable 53-33 lead with 5:42 to play.
LO fell to 4-13 overall and 1-3 in league play with the loss, while Gilroy improved to 14-7 overall and 3-1 in league. The Mustangs are in a second-place tie with Hollister-San Benito.
Sports Editor Jim Johnson contributed to this story.
