Hot start propels Burroughs girls’ basketball past Arroyo Valley in second round of CIF
When the Burroughs High girls’ basketball team won its playoff opener, it had already done better in the postseason than last season.
So, in looking to keep its postseason going, Burroughs faced visiting Arroyo Valley. It got the job done.
Fourth-seeded Burroughs used a strong start to seize control and stay up the rest of the way en route to a 67-50 CIF Southern Section Division II-A second-round win Saturday.
“It’s a big win. We’ve been wanting this,” Indian Kayla Wrobel said. “We have been pushing and practicing.
“Last year, we made it to the first round and were kind of disappointed when we lost, so now we are pushing. We’re not done. We want to go all the way.”
Burroughs (24-6) will travel to Whittier Christian for a quarterfinal game Wednesday at a time to be determined.
“We did a good job following the game plan,” said Burroughs coach Vicky Oganyan, whose team defeated St. Bonaventure in a first-round road game Thursday. “We got out to a really good early lead and then we just kept it [going] from there.”
Burroughs opened up on a 16-1 run to start the game against Arroyo Valley (24-6). The first-quarter lead peaked at 18 points when Dyani Del Castillo drained the hosts’ first three-pointer of the game with under two minutes left. After a dominant first quarter that set the tone going forward, Burroughs led, 22-8.
“We knew that if we were going to have a good game we had to start off well,” Indian Noor Fahs said. “We had to have high intensity and just get on a roll so that so the rest of the game we could just keep getting better.”
Burroughs’ Faith Boulanger led the way with a team-high 23 points, including 16 coming in the second half, split evenly between the third and fourth quarters. The junior forward also had seven rebounds and four assists.
Wrobel came up big with a double-double, composed of 18 points and a team-high 10 rebounds. The junior had nine points in the first quarter before sitting out a good portion of the second because of foul trouble. Wrobel scored seven points in the third quarter to combine with Boulanger for all the hosts’ points in the quarter.
Del Castillo had 12 points, including three makes from beyond the arc. Fahs was the final Indian in double figures with 11 points while also registering four assists and four steals.
Arroyo Valley’s Nylah Prince had an impressive effort, finishing with a game-high 37 points. The senior scored 21 of her team’s 25 first-half points while accounting for all the Hawks’ field goals before the break. In the fourth quarter, as the visitors tried to claw their way back, Prince had 12 of her team’s 14 points.
It was quite a basketball odyssey for Oganyan on Saturday.
In addition to her coaching duties, Oganyan is also a freshman guard playing for the Glendale Community College women’s basketball team.
On Saturday, the Vaqueros had a Western State Conference game at 5 p.m. at Antelope Valley College. Oganyan played all 40 minutes of Glendale’s 69-59 victory, recording a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. That game ended at 6:35 and Oganyan walked into the Burroughs gymnasium during the introduction of her players. She coached the game still wearing her Glendale College uniform shorts with a Burroughs sweatshirt on top.
“I’m not tired yet, but I bet in a couple hours I’ll be tired,” Oganyan said. “Right now, I am just excited.”
The second quarter saw the Hawks make the contest competitive, cutting their deficit to single digits late. The Burroughs advantage had shrunk to eight in the final minute before Fahs nailed a three-pointer just before halftime.
In the third quarter, the Indians exploited their size advantage inside to stoke the lead back up to a comfortable gap. In the fourth, Arroyo Valley got as close as 12 before Boulanger scored the final five points.
“Every game is different. Every matchup is different, but right now we are playing really good basketball. The key is just to keep working defensively,” Oganyan said. “We know it is going to be tough in the next round, but we are excited for the challenge.”