Crescenta Valley girls’ basketball rolls past Burbank
BURBANK — Hot shooting and strong defense propelled the Crescenta Valley High girls’ basketball team to its eighth consecutive victory, 63-44, over host Burbank in Pacific League play Tuesday.
Four Falcons scored eight or more points, while five players drained at least one of the team’s 11 three-pointers as Crescenta Valley led by seven after one quarter and never looked back.
“Outside of the last three minutes of the first half, I thought the offense was excellent,” Crescenta Valley coach Jason Perez. “It’s not just making shots, which we did, but it’s about taking good shots. We didn’t force many shots and we put ourselves in a good place scoring-wise.”
Reigning league champion Crescenta Valley improved to 15-4 and 6-0 in league with its seventh straight league triumph, while Burbank dropped to 8-12, 3-3.
Falcons sophomore guard Denise Dayag led all scorers with 16 points, while junior guard Georgina Kregorian added 14 points, senior guard Sarah Perez chipped in 11 points and senior guard Rachel Dayag contributed eight points.
For Burbank, junior guard Osanna Tirityan paced her team with 15 points, 14 rebounds and five assists, while Sofia Aslanyan added 10 points and 12 rebounds and Jayla Flowers tallied eight points.
Crescenta Valley all but clinched the contest in the second quarter.
Back-to-back three-pointers by Kregorian put Crescenta Valley ahead, 26-14, at the 5:30 mark as the Falcons’ lead never dipped back to single digits.
Kregorian eventually finished with nine points in the quarter as the Falcons won the period, 15-4, and took a 34-16 advantage into halftime.
“We were just running our offense and doing our thing,” Sarah Perez said. “What you saw out there wasn’t anything new, that’s just our half-court offense. That’s how we run it every game and we just kept working on it as a team.”
While Crescenta Valley was scoring in bunches, the Falcons took turns doubling and throwing different defensive schemes at Tirityan, who entered having tallied back-to-back triple-doubles.
“The first thing we had to do was trust our teammates and help,” Kregorian said. “We set up a specific defense to try to shut her down individually because we know she was the biggest threat to us.”
Up by 18 points, the Falcons won the third quarter, 16-13, while Burbank captured the fourth, 15-13.
“It’s a good win, but we know as a team that we can get better,” Rachel Dayag said. “We want to live up to last year’s team and win another league title. We know we can do that if we play together.”
Under the best of circumstances, the match-up was going to be difficult for Burbank and coach Jason Wells.
However, Wells was without injured sophomore guard Brianna Castro and then witnessed Burroughs transfer Jasmine Chavez suffer a leg injury in warm-ups.
“It’s just one of those things where we’re hoping to get both back as soon as possible,” Wells said. “I kind of laugh because if you look around the Pacific League, there have been plenty of injuries with us, CV and Arcadia. It’s like a Pacific League bug.
“We’ll know who we are in league with how we handle the injuries.”
