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Providence defense leads way in boys’ basketball win over Glendale Adventist

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GLENDALE — In the opening quarter on Thursday night, the Glendale Adventist Academy boys’ basketball team was able to deal with the Providence defense.

The Cougars took care of the ball in the opening stanza, committed just three turnovers and trailed the Pioneers by six.

But things changed drastically in the second quarter.

The Providence defense started to get to Glendale Adventist. As a result, the Pioneers took control, hounded the Cougars to the tune of 29 turnovers and walked away with a 69-34 Independence League victory.

“When you’re playing against a team, especially on the road, you want to set the tone defensively,” said Providence coach Brandon Lincoln, whose team improved to 12-7, 2-2 in league. “When you don’t set the tone defensively, it gives the other team confidence and they can jump all over you.”

Glendale Adventist (4-9, 0-5) had a 10-9 lead in the first quarter before the Pioneers, the defending league champions, ended the stanza on a 9-2 run to go into the first break with an 18-12 advantage.

In the second quarter, the Cougars had twice as many turnovers (eight) as points (four) and were outscored 12-4. Providence went into halftime with a 14-point lead, 30-16.

“The turnovers was the thing that definitely hurt us the most,” Glendale Adventist coach Marton Medina said. “We play them again on Monday and we really have to try and clean that up.

“But I am still proud of our guys. They are working in a new system and everything that I’ve thrown at them is new, but their intensity is up and they are really working hard.”

Providence received a fine effort from Tevan Khudatyan, who had a game-high 22 points to go along with three steals. AJ Bautista added 13 points and Bryce Whitaker chipped in 11.

Eleven turnovers in the third quarter by the Cougars helped the Pioneers increase their advantage to 50-28.

The Providence lead swelled to 64-32 with a steal and basket by Khudatyan with 2:11 left.

“In my opinion, I thought that we started off a little slowly at first,” Khudatyan said. “But after the first quarter we started to pick things. Coach Lincoln told us that we have to come out with more intensity and I think we did that in the second half.”

Glendale Adventist received 11 points and six rebounds from Joshua Young, seven points from Steve Dorsey and six from Donovan Corbin.

jeffrey.tully@latimes.com

Twitter: @jefftsports

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