No Summer Break for CV Hoops

A winning tradition is something that has been the symbol of Crescenta Valley boys’ basketball program since the school opened in 1960.

Just five men have headed the storied program that has produced a number of high school All-Americans and elite collegiate players like Brad Holland, Bill Boyd and Harvey Mason, who played at UCLA, USC and the University of Arizona respectively.

Next winter the Falcons will have perhaps their best returning team in more than a decade.

CV returns four starters and five of its top six players from a team that went 20-8 last season. The Falcons were stunned in the first round of the CIF playoffs last season as a flu bug hit the group and proved to be a fatal blow.

“We have a core coming back so we are going to build around that core,” said coach Shawn Zargarian.

Zargarian said one of the keys this summer will be to work on developing the rest of the team.

“We have a lot of experience coming back,” Zargarian said. “Everybody knows [that] to be a successful team you need role players, you need guys off the bench. Besides our core, we will be experimenting with guys on the bench to see who our sixth man will be. We want to be able to relieve some pressure off of our starters.”

Zargarian said he likes having a busy summer schedule.

“My plan in the summer is always we don’t practice as much,” he said. “We play a lot more games. As far as practice is concerned we do a lot more individual work. We’re working on guys with specific skills. In the summer we’re looking to play some tough teams, some tough competition to gauge where we are against good teams and see where we need to get better.”

The Falcons have lost just three times this summer, one of which was a 72-63 loss to defending Division 1 State Champion Mater Dei of Santa Ana, which returns the bulk of its starting lineup.

“So far we’ve played Alemany and Pasadena which have been tough tests for us,” Zargarian said before the Mater Dei game. “Unfortunately we didn’t come out and perform the right way. That’s what the summer is for. After playing those two teams we understand what we need to get better at.”

The Falcons have two big players in 6-foot-7 center Rudy Avila and 6-4 Christian Misi, who was the Pacific League Most Valuable Player and an All-CIF pick last year.

“What we have in our starting five are five capable scorers,” Zargarian said. “We can get double-figure scoring from all five positions so guys are going to have to be really unselfish and do a good job of going to what’s working in each game. I think we have a good core and good chemistry.”

Junior Cole Currie, 6-2, is the only underclassmen slated to start. He was a first-team all-league selection last season. Dylan Kilgour, a second-team all-league selection, returns as the starting point guard. Davis Dragovich was the sixth man last season and an honorable mention all-league selection and will be the small forward.

“I’d like us to compete for an entire length of a game,” Zargarian said. “You have situations where you let down for four or five minutes or you look at the scoreboard and you play to the score. I don’t want to do that. I want our guys to compete for the entire length of a game. I’d like our defensive energy to pick up, which it has. We’re still making quite a few mistakes defensively, but I like how hard we’re playing.”

Zargarian says his team is similar to last season’s La Cañada High team in that many of his players have also played together for a long time.

“We’ve been talking about that these guys have been playing together for a long time,” Zargarian said of his players. “You hope that good things happen with a group like that. They’ve been playing together since they were very young and they’ve played four years at CV. They know each other real well on and off the court.

“It was nice to see La Cañada, and what made them special was they played together since they were nine or 10 years old. They had an amazing run and won a CIF title. We hope and wish we can have a run like that.”