By Brandon HENSLEY

On Friday night, Crescenta Valley High students and fans packed their gymnasium to see their basketball team, the Falcons, stick it to their rival, the Arcadia Apaches. They got their wish, as CV won 77-68 and, although the game was intense with coaches screaming and both student sections taunting the other – you know, the usual – the best player on the court looked as if he was running plays in a summer league game. He played like it was no big deal, like the idea of spinning and hitting shots over guys taller than he in pressure moments wasn’t anything to be celebrated nor stressed over.

If this sounds like criticism of Arman Pezeshkian, it is not. The senior guard is tearing up the Pacific League and making it look so easy you sort of don’t realize his impact on the game. He’s someone you know played well in those 32 minutes, but those looking at the stat sheet afterward are shocked. Maybe he had 25 points tonight. That seems about right.

Nope.

He had 41 against Burbank? Wow, didn’t even seem like it.

Falcons’ Head Coach Shawn Zargarian, whose team is 5-3 in league, said there’s no real secret to Pezeshkian’s success. He may not look passionate on the court, but you know what is said about judging books by their covers.

“He’s just a hooper. He knows how to throw his body around and he’s good with both hands. He’s got touch,” Zargarian said, whose team is 6-3 and in third place in league.

Last summer, Zargarian said Pezeshkian could be a guy who averaged 25 points a night, easily. He was averaging over 30 points a game this league season heading into this week’s action and doing it in a myriad of ways. Teams may not have known about him before, but Pasadena High opened the season with CV and put its Division I college recruit Bryce Hamilton on him, and he still scored 39 points in the upset win.

“I expected to go into that game and win it. I didn’t know how many points I was going to score, but I knew we had a good chance of winning that game,” Pezeshkian said. “It just so happened that I scored 39.”

And that’s him in a nutshell. He’ll go out there and run the offense, pass it off to his best friend Chris Arzoumanian, or take directions from point guard Edgmin Rostomian, improvise here and there and, oh, what do you know? It just so happened he scored 39 points against the best team in league. A week later he had 41 against Burbank. The win against Arcadia? Another 39.

He’s undersized, and that might tell teams that he’s just an outside shooter but, even though Pezeshkian isn’t the fastest runner or the highest jumper, he’s perfected ways to score that no one can stop.

“Teams always pressure up on me and try to run me off a (three-point shot), but if I don’t have the three, I’ll drive in,” he said. “It’s fine.”

Pezeshkian likes to spin. He’ll pump fake a three-point shot, take a couple of hard dribbles in, whip around back to the three-point line, and nail the shot when you didn’t think he had nearly enough balance to do so. The other spin happens down low when he glides into the key and in an instant he’s on the other side of his defender as he scoops in a soft layup off the glass.

“That’s my go-to move, my favorite move,” he said. “Since I was little I’ve been doing that move.”

Almost everything about his game is soft and, again, that’s a compliment. Scorers usually announce their presence with loud body language, hard slashes to the basket and long three-pointers that is as ostentatious as their personality. But not Pezeshkian. His shot looks like it’s carried by clouds on the way to the basket. His spin moves and slashes aren’t edgy like many players his size (5’9”). Those guys play with chips on their shoulders, but Pezeshkian just plays.

Zargarian said he’s can’t really compare him to some of the other great scorers who played for the Falcons, like Cole Currie or Dylan Kilgore.

“He’s a completely different player. He’s someone I haven’t coached before,” Zargarian said. “I’ve coached some really good guys who have played at the next level but, with him, he knows stuff, he sees the gaps, he loves basketball. We always joke and say if you were 6’2” or 6’3” you could play Division I basketball.”

He also gets to the foul line at will and that’s probably the most important part to his game. He forces the action in a calm way, averaging more than 10 free-throw attempts a game and shooting better than 80% there. It’s a good way to up his stats and ice close contests.

“Coaches tell me to attack all the time and, when I attack, I get contact,” Pezeshkian said.

Last year was Pezeshkian’s first on varsity and he said it was a learning year. Heading into the season, Zargarian wanted to implement a free-flowing offense that revolved around team chemistry and effort and less reliance on play-calls. It looked like Arzoumanian was going to be the other half of a dynamic duo. While CV still relies on Arzoumanian for big shots, and he can consistently score in double figures, it’s a testament to Pezeshkian’s skill that he has set himself apart both on his team and against his opponents.

“I’m comfortable with that, but I don’t want it to be about me,” he said with more of that same laid back, but confident, attitude. “I’m more of a team player. As long as we win games and get better, I’m okay with that.”

  Brandon Hensley