Christopher persevered through the entirety of the game to upend Live Oak 77-39 Thursday at the 36th annual Bob Hagen Memorial basketball tournament
The Cougars, behind the shooting of Xander Bowers, Thomas Ellis and Alec Cordova, started the game off strong for Christopher, scoring a total of 27 points.
Despite a slow start in the first quarter, Live Oak’s Symon Tan, Garrett Cardona, and Eric Payne, fired back at the Cougars second quarter, decreasing the margin to 39-21 by halftime.
The second half of the game Garrett Cardona was fired up during third quarter, with his pesky defense, holding the Acorns to five points out of the half.
Christopher’s Xander Bowers scored seven points in the frame to increase the margin to 22 points by the end of the third quarter.
Live Oak’s Joel Goble of Live Oak scored five points for the Acorns within the first five minutes of the final quarter of the game to cut into the Cougar lead, but it was not enough.
Christopher’s Chris Burnette put up eight points in the fourth quarter.
“Chris has been on the varsity basketball team since he was a sophomore, now he’s a junior who has trained and conditioned intensively over the summer and realized what mistakes he had to correct,” said Christopher coach Dan Mooney of Burnette. “Now he’s ready to compete. He is definitely a key component on this team.”.
Live Oak’s Brenden White and Cardona used their speed the last three minutes of the game in attempt to close the margin between the Cougars by gaining five points combined.
“We’re 3-1 so it’s still very early, but we have a really good talented young group that can give it all out there on the court,” Mooney said. “Our team is all about diversity. Of course, we have our strong senior starters, but we have strong sophomores and juniors on this team as well.”
Mooney said the benefit to playing a game like this is it gave some of the younger players some experience, which will be key for the Cougars as they make a run into Gabilan Division play.
“This game allowed us to take out some of the starters and play some of the reserves, and that’s how you want to develop a program,” Mooney said. “That’s the direction we’re going in. We have a very good basketball team that has shown a lot of promise so I am very pleased.”
