Nitros get their chance
NORTHWEST GLENDALE — The Glendale High girls’ basketball team knew just how to handle archrival Hoover in Thursday’s Pacific League, pouncing early to come away with a dominant 59-34 victory.
By all accounts, no one is yet sure just how to handle the logjam for fourth place in league which the Nitros’ win helped create, but by this morning there figures to be some clarity on the situation.
Glendale (14-12, 6-8 in league) now sits in a four-way tie for fourth with Crescenta Valley, Arcadia and Burbank, but as of press time, there was no firm decision on how to break the tie and award the last automatic playoff berth from the eight-team league.
Reportedly, there will be a meeting between the league’s athletic directors today to do just that. Regardless of the tiebreakers, the teams can also petition for at-large berths within their respective divisions.
“It might be a coin toss or whatever we’ve got to do, but I petitioned anyway, just in case,” Glendale Coach Tania Adary said.
None of it would matter to Glendale if it had not rose to the occasion of beating its rival for the second time this season and the Nitros, who were led by 25 points from Serah Mirzaeian, got right to work on that task.
The Nitros took an 18-2 lead with just over 2:30 to play in the opening quarter and still led by 16 going into the second quarter. Hoover mounted a small run in the second quarter, but Glendale still had a comfortable lead of a dozen at halftime.
“The last time we were up by five or six at halftime and I told them [today] that this time it’s going to be much more intense because it’s their senior night,” said Adary, whose team beat Hoover, 48-27, on Jan. 21. “[The Nitros] kind of came out ready to go and we’re coming off a big win over CV, so this was big for us.”
With less than 1:30 gone by in the third quarter, Mirzaeian, who made six three-pointers in the game, sank a deep ball to put Glendale up, 32-15. Stella Ghazarian, who scored 10 points for the Nitros, hit a three-pointer at the 4:24 mark and then a layup with 4:00 to go in the third period to push Hoover (1-20, 0-14) in a 21-point hole.
“I told them no matter what happens to just go out swinging, go out as aggressively as they could,” said Hoover Coach Stan Watson, who got 12 points from Amatia Golbodaghi and eight from Sera Baghdsaryan. “We know the year didn’t work out as we had planned, but we had a great experience, we had fun.”