Amy Gunther said Live Oak’s girls basketball team wanted to play with an edge from the start Friday night at Sobrato.
The freshman guard made sure the Acorns had no problem with that.
Live Oak scored the first 13 points and cruised to a 61-25 win over the rival Bulldogs. Gunther scored seven of her game-high 22 points in the first quarter as the Acorns built a 23-4 lead.
“We wanted to try to get the game going,” Gunther said. “We wanted to try to bring intensity and play hard, and the game started out really well.”
Really, really well.
Jocelyn Mendoza scored the first six points of the game, and Gunther hit a 3-pointer from the left wing to give Live Oak (3-1) an 11-0 lead and force a Sobrato timeout only 1 minute, 52 seconds into the game.
“It was unbelievable,” Acorns coach Mike Kiefer said of the quick start. “After that, it’s just trying to keep them to maintain their focus. In the start of the second quarter, we kind of lost our focus a bit. But it’s great to see a young team like this continue to build. Starting out that fast is unbelievable.”
Live Oak held Sobrato without a field goal until early in the second quarter.
“We like to take control at the beginning and show that we don’t stand for anything less than that,” said Acorns guard Fayth Lyon, one of four Live Oak freshmen playing varsity. “We just go out with a bang and play our hardest.”
Mendoza scored 12 points for Live Oak, which got nine points from Lyon and seven points from Alex Balala.
“I just think we had an awesome win today,” Lyon said.
Tauheeda Id-Deen paced the Bulldogs (0-2) with 12 points. Simone Wright added six points for Sobrato.
