Roundup: Livingston’s Winton passes 1,000 career points. Atwater stuns Pitman late.

Nina Garcia wanted to get her Livingston High girls basketball team back on the court as quick as possible at the half so the Wolves coach kept her players on the bench at halftime.

No need for a locker room speech.

“We stayed out here to try to keep them warm,” Garcia said. “I wanted them to get warmed up quickly and back on the court.”

It didn’t work.

Patterson dominated the third quarter, outscoring the Wolves 13-3 to open up an 11-point lead and carried that on to a 46-32 win at Angelo Naldi Court on Tuesday night.

The Tigers (15-6 overall, 5-0 Western Athletic Conference) hurt Livingston with layups in transition and second-chance points. Patterson scored six points on offensive rebounds in the third quarter.

“We knew they rebounded well and they capitalize on their offensive rebounds,” Garcia said. “We needed to box out better. They can all jump. All of Patterson’s players are athletic.”

While things collapsed on the defensive end, the Wolves compounded it with cold shooting. Annie Winton’s 3-pointer midway through the third quarter was Livingston’s only points of the quarter. The Wolves were shut out the final 4 minutes and 41 seconds of the quarter and made just 1 of 13 shots from the floor in the quarter.

“We didn’t come out with the right attitude in the second half,” Winton said. “We needed that fire and we just didn’t have it.”

Winton did reach a milestone. The third-quarter 3-pointer eclipsed the 1,000-career points mark. Winton came in needing 10 points to reach 1,000 and finished with 18 points.

Livingston senior Kevin Alvarez recently hit the 1,000-point mark for the boys program.

“I wasn’t even aware of it until about a week ago,” Winton said. “Kevin just reached it. I think that’s how it came about. It’s a cool mark. It would have been cool if it would have came with a ‘W.’”

Ezi Ogbuli led the Tigers, scoring eight of her 12 points in the fourth quarter.

The Wolves (12-8 overall, 3-2 WAC) misses an opportunity of creating a three-way tie atop the WAC with a win on Tuesday. Now Livingston is two games back at the halfway mark of the conference season.

Atwater 41, Pitman 39 in Turlock – The Falcons outscored the Pride 12-0 in the fourth quarter to erase a 10-point deficit in pull off a big win on the road.

Junior Lexi Valencia, who was making her first appearance since dislocating her left elbow the last time Atwater played Pitman on January 2, tied the game with a layup after a steal with 50 seconds left in the game.

Twin sister Kelsey Valencia then hit the eventual game-winner in the paint after another Atwater steal that gave the Falcons a 41-39 lead.

“The start of the fourth quarter, I told the girls, ‘This is your season. You have to go out and win it,’” Falcons coach JR Davis said. “They played their butts off in the fourth quarter.”

The Falcons (12-10, 4-3 Central California Conference) came into the game trailing Pitman (13-9, 4-3) by one game for third place in the CCC standings with three teams from the conference advancing to the playoffs.

Lexi Valencia led the Falcons with 11 points.

“We just started playing defense,” Davis said. “It was like we had no energy in the first half.”

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Roundup: Livingston’s Winton passes 1,000 career points. Atwater stuns Pitman late.."