BOYS BASKETBALL: Bulldogs suffer first league loss since 2003-04

By Scott Galetti, Staff Writer

BURBANK - There's an old saying that "all good things must come to and end."
True as that statement may be, nobody saw this coming.
Pasadena High School's boys basketball team has been the top dog in the Pacific League for quite some time.
The Bulldogs hadn't lost a league game since the final contest of the 2003-04 season, a streak of 37 games.
When the streak began, Burbank was competing in the Foothill League.
In just its second season in the league, Burbank put an end to the streak by handing visiting Pasadena a 61-44 loss in the battle of Bulldogs on Monday.
"The streak's gotta end," Pasadena coach Tim Tucker said. "You always want to keep the streak going, but it's good when the streak's over so you can just get back to playing."
Burbank (13-4, 3-1) set the early tone with hot shooting and scrappy defense and took advantage of Pasadena's cold shooting and untimely turnovers to stay in control.
Andre Alexandrian hit three 3-pointers and led Burbank with 21 points. Sevak Amranyan scored 20 points and Anthony Felix had 10.
Marcus Harvey and George Toyama each scored nine to lead Pasadena. The Bulldogs failed to have a player score in double figures.
Pasadena's leading scorer, Keion Bell, was held to just eight points.
"We're not getting balanced scoring," Tucker said.
Six-foot-nine junior center Joseph Henson, who has started the season slowly after undergoing offseason hip surgery, came off the bench to score four points in the third quarter for Pasadena.
"This is the first time that he's played in a week and a half and we only used him a couple of minutes because he's still hurting," Tucker said. "Obviously, he goes in there and he's our presence, but we're not playing him right now. We're sitting him out, and until we can get him back, we're just going to have to ride this storm out."
It was evident that a storm and an upset were in the works when Burbank raced to a 5-0 lead en route to a 15-1 advantage after one quarter.
"We come over here and ran into a hot team, and we're very cold," Tucker said. "I've never scored one point in a quarter in my life as a coach, and you have those kind of days.
"They shot the ball very well and we had a cold day."
With the exception of a spurt in the third quarter, Pasadena (11-5, 3-1) never warmed up.
The Bulldogs trailed 30-11 at the half and appeared primed for a comeback by outscoring Burbank, 11-3, to cut the deficit to 33-22 midway through the third quarter.
That's as close as the Bulldogs would get as Burbank responded with a 20-9 run to put the game out of reach.
Varag Zakarian calmly sank a 3-pointer with 5:06 to play in the contest to give Burbank a 53-31 lead.
"As a coach, you're never comfortable, you can be up one or 20, it kind of seems the same," Burbank coach Jose Hernandez said. "I thought the momentum was kind of on our side by that time."
Pasadena tried to use pressure defense to create steals, but never got closer than 15 points the rest of the way.
"We played hard and we just didn't get it done," Tucker said. "There's no panic in our camp at all. We'll go back and get ready for Glendale and Muir this week, and we're still in first place."