The Burroughs High girls’ basketball team is young.
Case in point: The team starts three underclassmen.
And that did not stop this group of Bears from winning their first two games of the CIF Southern Section Division II-A championships, and on tap was a quarterfinal contest hosting Santa Margarita.
Against the visiting Eagles, after a tight first half, Santa Margarita pulled away in the third quarter on the way to a 47-33 win, bringing host Burroughs’ season to an end.
“I’m just glad this young team got to experience the playoffs and go this far,” Burroughs coach Vicky Oganyan said. “I think today, they fought hard. We’ve come a long way from being, what I call, where they were like babies. We’ve kind of grown up, you know?”
Burroughs (25-6 overall; Pacific League runner-up) was down by one to Santa Margarita (19-11) at the break. The Eagles, an at-large entry from the Trinity League, scored first early in the third, but the Bears, the No. 2 entry from the Pacific, came right back with a hoop from Ashley Martin. After that the Bear offense fell silent and the visitors went on an 11-0 run to seize control.
Martin broke the run with a pair of free throws in the final minute of the frame, giving her all of her team’s points in the quarter. The next time down the court, the Eagles beat the press and banked in a three-pointer for the final points of the quarter, which Santa Margarita took 16-4 for a 39-26 advantage going into the fourth.
“We had to make adjustments and make sure we were defending the drive, and that enabled us to stop what they were trying to do offensively,” said Santa Margarita coach Seyram Bell of what changed in the second half.
Neither team scored for almost the first five minutes of the fourth quarter due to a combination of solid defense and a lack of made field goals, severely damaging any comeback effort by the Bears.
Bear Izzy Amoroso assisted Valentina Morales to make it 43-30 with 1:25 left. After that, the Eagles scored four straight points from the charity stripe, resulting in their largest lead of the contest at 17 points. Amoroso hit a free throw with 22 seconds to go, with the next points coming from senior Mia Paz in her final seconds as a Bear to set the final margin.
“It was in the half-court that [Santa Margarita] is so disciplined and they play defense; we just had a hard time scoring in the half-court,” Oganyan said. “We aren’t really a half-court team, so it was kind of a bad matchup. We also got some shots that we missed, that if we had put in, it might have been a different game.”
The sophomore Morales and Martin, in her last game playing for Burroughs, each scored eight points and grabbed nine rebounds apiece. Freshman Claire Hackney scored six points, all in the first half. Junior Mariam Fahs also scored six. Freshman Jessica Mena and Paz each scored two points, while Amoroso had one.
The Eagles had three players score in double digits, led by Léa-line Romain with 14 points, including seven in the pivotal third quarter, which was part of a second half that saw Burroughs get outscored 24-11.
“Offensively, they kind of switched up their defense and how they were defending us, so we kind of just calmed down,” Bell said of what changed after the break. “We were a little bit rushed and tense at the beginning, so we just took a deep breath, looked at what defense Burroughs was in and attacked accordingly.”
In the opening 4:03 of the contest, the Eagles scored all five of their points before Fahs made two free throws resulting from a technical foul. Martin scored the final points of the first for the hosts after making a move in the lane. Romain tipped in her own miss to put her team up 12-8 going into the second.
Burroughs scored the first six points of the second as part of a 10-2 run to open the period. It started with a one-hander in the lane from Fahs, and Hackney scored next on a long drive to the hoop. The opening burst finished with a basket by Morales, assisted by Amoroso, which gave the Bears their first lead of the quarterfinal. The Eagles made a layup but the Bears scored the next four, resulting in the hosts’ game-high cushion of four points. The Eagles finished the half on a 9-4 run after that to secure a 23-22 lead at the break.
Although the Bears’ season came to an end with the loss to the Eagles, the future is bright for Burroughs girls’ basketball.
“This team has come a long way from when we started until now,” Oganyan said. “I’m really proud of how they have developed. The sky is the limit for them because we return 11 of the 13 girls, so I’m excited for them. I think they are a great group.”
First published in the February 16 print issue of the Burbank Leader.
