Live Oak kicked off the Bob Hagen Tournament with a solid 55-34 win over Anzar Thursday night in Gilroy.
The Acorns (2-3) rode a third quarter run where they held the Hawks scoreless for the 8-minute period.
“We were playing down here and not too playing up here,” said Live Oak Coach Brett Paolucci indicating with his hands the different levels his boys were playing. “We started playing up there a little more in the second half.”
This is the Acorns’ second win in a row after starting the season off with a three-game skid. Live Oak took down Pajaro Valley 59-33 on Tuesday for its first win of the season.
“Last week was tough. We didn’t want to start the season 0-3, we definitely wanted to start at best 3-0,” Paolucci said. “But we were in every game. At the end of the week after all those games we lost, we lost by a combined score of 12. So we stressed we had been in every game.”
Live Oak now advances to the semis where it will faceoff against host Gilroy, whose first round game was canceled when Trinity Christian backed out because of the weather.
Michael Togliatti led the charge on offense with 12 points, including seven in the first quarter to get the Acorns off to a 16-7 start.
Justin Baker and Symon Tan followed with eight points each and Jared Freitas added nine more in the win.
Baker also led the Acorns in rebounding with 10. He is Live Oak’s best rebounder this season, averaging slightly more than nine per game.
“He’s been a beast for us on the boards,” Paolucci said. “… He has really is giving us a great, great job underneath, getting rebounds and going up high. We’re preaching that to him. He has to play above because we’re not the tallest team around.”
His rebounding was key for Live Oak, especially in the first half where he pulled down six boards.
Those proved key as Anzar went on a little run in the second quarter to go into the break trailing by eight. At one point early in the quarter, Live Oak led by 12 only to see Anzar finish on a 10-6 run.
But the Hawks fell apart in the third quarter.
Live Oak forced Anzar into six turnovers for the quarter and hardly gave the Hawks room to breathe on offense.
The Hawks were shutout in the quarter, allowing Live Oak to open up a 44-23 lead that the Acorns didn’t yield.
Paolucci credited JR Salvador with being the catalyst in the third quarter, helping to keep Anzar’s point guard quiet for much of the game.
“He did a good job on him all game long,” Paolucci said. “The kid was athletic. He was driving. He found where guys were open and so forth.”
Paolucci said though he didn’t put in too many adjustments from halftime, one of the big ones was forcing the guard to go to his left, which took him out of his game.
Going back to the second quarter, Live Oak went on 15-0 scoring run that was finally broken at the 6:44 mark of the fourth when Anzar finally hit a bucket.
Both sides traded buckets the whole quarter, but it was Live Oak led by Eric Togliatti’s pair of 3s that propelled the Acorns to the 21-point win.
Tan also had a good finish, scoring five points in the last frame.
Live Oak and Gilroy will square off in the semifinals starting at 8 p.m. at Gilroy.
