Baldwin looks to keep rolling

As the Baldwin Lady Bruins get set to defend their Nassau Class AA girls’ basketball championship, the boys’ team is looking to make a fifth consecutive appearance in the finals. Both teams swept their regular-season conference slates with matching 12-0 records, earning No. 1 seeds and first-round byes in their respective playoff tournaments largely due to a defense-first approach that frustrates opponents for 32 minutes a game. “I think defense is how you win championships,” girls’ coach Tom Catapano said. “We spend about half of our time in practice on defense.”

“We’ve done a great job defensively all season,” boys’ coach Darius Burton said, noting his team allowed just 45 points per game in Conference A-II play.

The numbers put up by the Baldwin boys (14-3 overall), who played in a second-round home matchup with No. 8 Kennedy after presstime, are downright scary. On top of locking down the nets, the Bruins also averaged 42.1 rebounds per game, 12.1 steals and 6.8 blocked shots.

Senior guard Aaron Greene, the Conference AA-II Player of the Year, was also one of three Baldwin players to earn All County honors. Senior power forward T’ziah Wood-Smith and junior small forward Kyle Richardson were also named All-County players, while senior center Eyituoyo Ofuya and junior point guard Brandon Williams earned All Conference honors.

And as selfish as Baldwin has been in keeping the ball from opponents and out of its own basket, the team has been equally selfless when it comes to generating points. Williams has dished out a team-high 6.6 assists during the regular season, but he was just one part of a multi-pronged offensive attack that has averaged 67.7 points per game and 20.8 assists.

Four Bruins are averaging at least 10 points per game, and as a team connects on nearly nine three-pointers per game. And as much as the guards get into the act from the perimeter--Williams, Greene and Richarson combined for 98 threes in 17 games--it’s Wood-Smith, the 6-4 power forward, that has the best percentage. He’s drained 14 of 31 three-point attempts to go along with a team-high 7.9 rebounds per game and 2.1 blocked shots.

A victory over the Cougars would place Baldwin back in the semifinals on Saturday at 1 p.m. at SUNY-Old Westbury against either No. 4 East Meadow or No. 5 Great Neck South.

The Lady Bruins (16-1 overall) matched up with No. 8 Freeport after presstime, where they were faced with slowing down guard Monique Jones, who lit up Kennedy for 27 points in a 59-47 first-round win last Thursday. The winner advanced to the semifinals against either No. 5 Mepham or No. 12 Hicksville on March 2. “We have to take every game one step at a time,” Catapano said. “To win and advance you have to stay focused. There are no guarantees that there will be a tomorrow.”