Live Oak broke open a close game to protect its home court with a 59-39 win over Overfelt Tuesday night in Blossom Valley Athletic League-West Valley Division action.
“We played a complete game tonight against a very athletic team,” said Live Oak coach Brett Paolucci. “We played four quarters of complete basketball. We wanted to come out and play with the same intensity in the game that we started with.”
With a close exciting first quarter, Live Oak (7-6, 2-1 in BVAL-WV) held on to a tight 16-14 lead over the Royals (3-10, 1-1).
“I think we defended their shots pretty well,” said Royals coach Tino Mendoza. “One thing that killed us was offensive rebounds and a few loose balls here and there. Other than that, defensively we challenged their shots; we forced them into tough looks. Unfortunately they got those 50/50 balls; that’s what hurt us.”
The Acorns began to pull away when they figured out how to attack the press and protect the ball better.
“We started attacking the basket more. We pushed the ball and we forced a lot more turnovers, which led to a lot of easy buckets. We were taking better shots,” said Live Oak forward Luke Laguna, who had several assists to go along with eight points on the night. “In the first half, guys were holding on to the ball a little too much. We passed the ball through the press. That’s the only way to beat the press. You can’t dribble through the press, which some of our guys tried to do in the first half. It didn’t work out.”
Live Oak led 28-19 at half and gradually extended its lead in the second half.
“Coming out of halftime, we knew we wanted to keep the lead,” said Live Oak junior forward Kalum Bergstrom (11 points). “We wanted to make it an even wider lead, so we couldn’t give them a chance of coming back. We really focused on our press offense. Once we got a defensive rebound, we just kept converting to get down to our end to score as fast as possible. As a team the best quarter was the third quarter. We were up by only 10 at the half, and we lengthened the lead to over 20 and kept it the rest of the game.”
Senior guard Andrew Poonia led the team with 13 points in his first game back after missing time with an ankle injury. Close behind was senior forward Eddie Plascencia with 12 points.
“I think we really pushed ahead in the third quarter after halftime,” Poonia said. “We distanced ourselves by playing defense and converting on offense. We just kept our heads up and kept getting after it.”
Live Oak hosts Yerba Buena Thursday night. For Overfelt, it was a tough loss considering the circumstances.
“Last night we had a double overtime game against Mt. Pleasant. I think our guys legs weren’t quite there tonight,” said Mendoza. “Live Oak came out with some intensity in the third quarter and our guys just didn’t have that extra energy in their system to match that. It’s just one of those things where the schedule kind of got the best of us tonight.”
Overfelt looks to bounce back Thursday night when it hosts Andrew Hill.
“I expect it to be another tough fought game. All the teams in our league are kind of similarly matched,” said Mendoza. “Not one team is going to run away with the division, so I expect it to be a tough matchup as well.”
