The Live Oak girls defeated Del Mar 42-29 Wednesday night to hand the Dons their fifth consecutive defeat.
“Our biggest struggle is always offense because we don’t have a lot of consistent shooters," Dons coach Bill Murray said. "We’re pretty young; we only have two seniors. We learn from the mistakes.”
After a tough loss against Del Mar in summer league, Live Oak was able to gain its revenge.
“I never played against Del Mar, but the rest of the team did during summer league and they lost by one. So, we had a chip on our shoulder. We got payback and we won,” said Jocelyn Mendoza, who led Live Oak with 13 points. “Our offense isn’t based on one player; it’s based on all of us. It just worked out great.”
Live Oak led 11-7 after a closely contested first quarter.
“For the first quarter, we were expecting really aggressive (defense) and we got it. We all got pushed when we were trying to cut,” said Acorn freshman Amy Gunther, who scored 12 points. “We just had to adjust to it and push them back. We have to give them what they were giving us.”
Live Oak led 25-16 at the half and gained distance after that.
“We expected a very physical game,” said Acorn Coach Mike Kiefer. “We kind of got a sense of how they play (last summer) and we knew they would be aggressive and in our face. We came out ready and prepared for that. Summer is summer; season is where it’s all important.”
Rocky Rodrigues (15 points) led the Dons in scoring -- her most successful quarter being the last. Close behind was Mia Favela (11 points).
“We tried to put a little pressure on the ball; get a few steals out of it. We tried to get points out of transitions,” said Murray.
Live Oak (11-6, 5-2 BVAL-West Valley) could not build on the momentum of Wednesday, though, losing to San Jose the following night.
Del Mar (7-10, 2-5) went on to get a much-needed win against Overfelt.
