Leland rallies to beat Acorns and gain upper hand in BVAL’s
Mount Hamilton Division race
Morgan Hill – Live Oak High boys water polo coach Mack Haines expected his Acorns to match up pretty closely with new Blossom Valley Athletic League Mount Hamilton Division rival Leland.
Haines couldn’t have been more correct.
The top two teams in the league battled through four quarter and two sessions of overtime before the Chargers escaped with a come-from-behind 11-10 victory.
“We had opportunities to put the game away on our extra-man situations,” said Haines, whose team held a 9-7 lead with less than a minute and a half to go, before Leland scored twice – the game-tying goal coming with 28 seconds left.
“I was dissappointed that we didn’t play smarter when we were up two with 1:40 left,” Haines added. “But that’s all part of the learning process. Mistakes become experience. So hopefully when we go to the league championship game against Leland we will take a little extra time on our shooting and protect the ball better.”
The two teams may be new as league rivals, but they certainly have history. They have met four times in the postseason since 1997, when Live Oak beat Leland 13-9 in the Central Coast Section championship game.
The Acorns also beat the Chargers in the semifinals in 1999 and the quarterfinals in 2001, while Leland knocked off Live Oak in the 2003 semifinals.
“We’ve had some pretty good success against Leland in the last few years in very big games,” So I also think (the win) makes (Leland) more confident. Because once you finally beat that team that’s been your nemises, then now it’s going to be easier for them. If we could’ve held on I think it would’ve been pretty devastating. But that could work either way, that should make our players more focused also.”
Leland nearly put the game away in regulation, as with seven seconds left the Chargers Max Dobrushin was awarded a penalty shot. But Acorns’ goalie Andrew Reimer delivered his second penalty shot save of the game (he also stopped Dobrushin on an attempt in the third quarter) and that helped send the game to overtime.
After a scoreless first overtime, Leland struck first in the second overtime, with Matt Eisenberg firing in a goal with 1:30 left.
Live Oak didn’t take long to score the equalizer with Kyle Fast, despite being blanketed by double-coverage, scored 18 seconds later to tie the game at 10-10.
With 45 seconds left in the period, the Chargers’ Marcus Gartner scored his team-high fourth goal of the game to give Leland an 11-10 lead.
The Acorns had their best chance to tie it when Cameron Peachy had a penalty shot attempt with 20 seconds left, but Leland goalie Eric Hsu came up with the save to preserve the win.
“I think we will definitley spend a lot of time on shoting and focusing on shooting under pressure,” Haines said. “We just didn’t shoot well. We played pretty solid defense, we gave it our all but I think part of our inexperience as a team playing at the varsity level came through.”
The loss dropped Live Oak to 7-7 overall and 1-1 in league play. Sam Cretcher led the way with five goals, Fast fought through the tough defense to score twice and Peachy also added two goals.
“They have good defense,” Fast said. “(Raymond La Rochelle) is good, he’s big, he’s strong. We did everything right, we had them beat at the end, we just couldn’t keep our composure for four quarters.”
Live Oak has dropped three straight now, after losing to North Coast Section powers Las Lomas and Sir Francis Drake in a tournament over the weekend.
Cretcher had six goals in the two games and now has 31 on the season. Fast is second on the team with 25 and Peachey has 24.
