By Brandon HENSLEY

The Crescenta Valley boys’ varsity basketball team won its Tuesday night summer league game against Buckley 56-38 at Heritage Christian High School, improving its summer record to 9-6. Wins and losses at this time of year are mostly inconsequential, but Falcons Head Coach Shawn Zargarian still noted how important it is for his team to stay competitive.

That might not be a concern this summer.

“Because we have so many guys coming back, playing off of six losses last year, I think they’re all ultra-competitive,” Zargarian said. “They’re not used to losing.”

He’s referencing last season’s team, which might have had the most successful season in program history. CV went 29-6, advanced to the CIF semifinals, and then went all they way to the regional finals in the state tournament. There have been two past seasons when the program played in the CIF championship game, but the Falcons had never made it past the first round of the state playoffs before.

Zargarian knows what it’s like to make a deep run; he was a player on the 1994 team that made the CIF finals and he coached the 2012 and 2013 teams that made the semifinals and state tournament. He acknowledged that by losing out on first-place finishes and then having to start over again was tough, but once enough time passed in the spring, the itch to get back on the court takes over.

“When you have a season like last year, you want to experience it again. The kids want to, the community wants to, so there’s that added incentive,” he said.

Senior guard Tyler Carlson will once again be a leader next season, as a scoring threat and as someone to lead by example. He won’t have Andreyas Boghossian, who graduated, by his side anymore, and that is the biggest loss CV will have to deal with, Zargarian said. Despite Boghossian’s sometimes risky play, he “took so much of the ball handling pressure off Tyler last year. He was competitive, a leader. He did so much for us.”

In his place the team is currently looking at Sean Kosco to help Carlson in the backcourt. Kosco, now a sophomore, played sparingly on the varsity last season and will have to learn more of what it takes to play alongside Carslon.

The team also lost reserve center Harout Tahanian and guard/forward Alex Zohouralen, both key components for the squad. Zargarian said he’s trying out several players from lower divisions and they might end up seeing time come December when the real games begin.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to replace those guys individually,” he said. “We’re going to have to replace them collectively.”

CV is scheduled to play in the Maranatha Block Party today, Thursday, through Saturday, then it starts the Crespi High tournament on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. The tournament runs until June 29, and then the team will break for the rest of summer.

  Brandon Hensley