1-0 victory sends Acorns to quarterfinal against Santa Cruz
ATHERTON — With his neon-yellow cleats shining in the unseasonably warm sunlight, Alejandro Diaz looked like a blur Wednesday as he shepherded defenders up and down the pitch.
He was a dazzling sight to all except those supporting Sacred Heart.
“Stop the one with the yellow shoes! Don’t let him get the ball!” One of the Gators fans yelled midway through the second half.
By then, Diaz and the Live Oak Acorns had completely unraveled the No. 7-seeded team in the Central Coast Section Division III tournament. The West Valley Division champions made the trip to Atherton to play a first-round game against a team that coach Matt Dodge called his best in four years at Sacred Heart.
His Gators were outperformed by the undersized, underrated No. 11 seed.
Live Oak overmatched them with crisp passing and speed, grinding the first half into a defensive stalemate that was shattered by Diaz’s header into the net during the 32nd minute. The Acorns jammed their side of the field during the hotly contested second half and held on for dear life to earn their first playoff win in five years, 1-0.
“This is a good one,” said coach Tony Goble, now in his 11th year with Live Oak. “I’ve been here with this team four times, and we’ve always been the better seed, which is supposed to win these games.
“Coming out of a ‘C’ league against a ‘B’-league winner … There was no pressure on us.”
Diaz provided one of many golden touches the Acorns (9-2-10) needed to upstage the West Bay Athletic League-champion Gators (16-4), who had won 14 straight going in. Live Oak dodged — or appeared to had dodged — two bullets on one controversial play in the 57th minute.
It started when Sacred Heart forward Victor Ojeda played a through ball on the right wing, wove 20 yards upfield and crossed to Reid Gaa. From 15 yards out, Gaa blasted a shot that Acorns goalkeeper Dalton VandenBrandHorninge tipped toward the far side of the goal mouth — and right to Sacred Heart’s Alec Mishra.
Live Oak freshman defender Alexis Diaz got in front of the goal and stopped Mishra’s first shot while VandenBrandHorninge scrambled to get back in position. Mishra’s rebound try was floating toward the top left corner when VandenBrandHorninge, then inside the net, gloved it just under the crossbar.
Gators fans broke into celebration, though no whistle sounded. The Sacred Heart players swarmed the referee, screaming that the ball broke the goal line, but the score stood 1-0.
“That was out; no question,” said VandenBrandHorninge, who matched Saavedra with four saves. “I definitely got to it in time.”
The play set the stage for a foul-riddled second half. Switching from a 4-4-2 alignment that has been a catalyst in Live Oak’s 19-game win streak, Goble dropped back as many as nine players for defense to counter Sacred Heart’s intensified pressure.
“You try scoring against 10 guys and see what happens,” Dodge said. “We couldn’t get the ball through. It should never have come to that, though.”
The Gators’ frustration gave way to six fouls called against them in the final 40 minutes.
“They lost it mentally,” Live Oak midfielder Jacob Montoya said. “They took themselves out of it, and we kept calm. We didn’t let emotions get to us.”
As the Acorns deflected shot after shot, Alejandro Diaz — then at forward — and Ubaldo Lopez reeled off long runs into open space to eat up time; in the 79th minute, Diaz had a 1-on-1 opportunity with Gators goalkeeper Max Polkinhorne but shot directly at him.
Alejandro Diaz has been his team’s most consistent goal scorer this year, though his production tailed off slightly in the last few games.
“I think he felt pressure because he wasn’t scoring as much,” Goble said. “He was very special today. He’s a huge player.”
Sacred Heart outshot Live Oak 7-2 in the opening 20 minutes, including three attempts from inside 25 yards, but could not crack Eric Saavedra, who started in net for the Acorns.
Freshman midfielder Brendan Spillane had the Gators’ best chance to score off Mishra’s corner kick the 10th minute. Andrew Liotta passed to Spillane, who, from 7 yards out, let fly a nice header that went straight to Saavedra.
“It was just boring, uninspired soccer by us,” said Dodge, who likened the game to Team U.S.A.’s win over Canada last week in Olympic hockey. “We had every opportunity to go out and win this game, but we didn’t even show up.
“We had a great team this year; a very special one. But no team is going to win when it takes an opponent as lightly as we did.”
With Alejandro Diaz at midfielder, the Acorns disrupted Sacred Heart’s rhythm in the 12th minute when Diaz got the ball from Dylan Frechette on a give-and-go play down the left sideline. Jacob Montoya and Frechette unloaded clean shots on net in the next few minutes, and the Gators resorted to sending away long 50/50 balls.
“They’re taught to play physical. They battled for every loose ball,” Goble said of Sacred Heart. “Our guys are pretty tough. We weren’t backing down.”
The Gators began defending Alejandro Diaz and Montoya closer by the 30th minute, but Live Oak still found passing lanes on the wings. The Acorns moved the ball upfield on three straight throw-ins, leading to Diaz’s corner kick that was tipped out of bounds by Polkinhorne.
From the right side, Montoya threw long to 6-foot-2 sophomore Ben Hartl, who was 6 yards away from the net. Hartl headed the ball behind him toward the far side, and Diaz finished it in the top right corner of the net.
“I always try to find Ben’s head on plays like that, and Alejandro was in the right place,” Montoya, a junior midfielder, said. “We weren’t intimidated at all going in. That goal pushed our confidence way up.”
The Acorns suddenly look dangerous in the small-school tournament. Last year, West Valley champion Prospect parlayed a first-round win over Sacred Heart and a quarterfinals triumph against Santa Cruz into a run to the Division III crown.
Live Oak will play No. 3 Santa Cruz at 10 a.m. Saturday at Aptos High.
“We’re not really used to being the underdog,” Goble said before pausing. “But, to tell you the truth, I kind of like it.”
