Elmont beats Baldwin for Class AA title

Somebody had to win.

Trailing by three points with less than two minutes remaining in Saturday’s Nassau Class AA boys’ basketball championship game at Hofstra, second-seeded Elmont went 6-for-8 from the foul line in crunch time to pull out a 32-29 victory over No. 1 Baldwin before a crowd of 1,500.

It’s the first title in program history for the Spartans, who held the Bruins to single digits in all four quarters and didn’t allow a field goal in the final 3:03 after junior Kyle Richardson gave Baldwin a 28-26 lead with only the second three-pointer of the game. Senior point guard Robert Chambers scored 10 points to lead Elmont (18-2), which will meet Half Hollow Hills West for the L.I. Class AA crown Sunday at SUNY-Stony Brook at 4 p.m.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it feels great,” Spartans coach George Holub said. “We’re two similar teams. Everything we run, they run. It just came down to us making a few more plays in the last few minutes.”

Baldwin (16-4), which got a game-high 12 points from senior forward T’ziah Wood-Smith, lost in the finals for the fourth time in five seasons. The Bruins failed to get off a shot on their final possession after Chambers’s free throw with 12.9 seconds to go. 

“This one hurts,” Baldwin coach Darius Burton said. “It was our game to win and we’re extremely disappointed. We played hard and played great defense, but we couldn’t have struggled more offensively.”

After scoring a season-high 92 points in a quarterfinal playoff win over Kennedy on Feb. 22 and beating Great Neck South 54-49 in the semis four days later, Baldwin missed its first 10 shots against Elmont and dug an early nine-point hole. After a timeout, Wood-Smith carried the team on his back for the remainder of the quarter with all nine of its points.

“T’ziah had a big game,” Burton said. “He gave us the early spark we needed and did a nice job defensively against Anthony [Elechi].”

Elechi, a 6-foot-6 senior forward and Elmont’s leading scorer, had the first two baskets of each half but was held to nine points. Senior guard Dillon Williams, the Spartans’ second-leading scorer, was held without a point but came up huge on defense, including a crucial steal in the closing seconds.

“I was frustrated offensively, but I knew I had to help my team somehow,” Williams said. “I just kept up the intensity on defense.”

Elmont squandered the early lead and trailed by four late in the first half when junior Greg Senat converted a three-point play off a missed free throw to cut the margin to 16-15 at intermission.

Baldwin’s Aaron Greene (nine points) heated up during a back-and-forth third quarter. He scored six straight for the Bruins, and junior Brandon Williams added his only field goal for a 24-20 lead. The Spartans tied it heading into the fourth on baskets by senior Tyler Dechalus and Chambers. 

“We weren’t making shots, but we just hung in there and won with defense,” Dechalus said.

Elmont didn’t hit a field goal over the final eight minutes but made plenty of trips to the line. The Spartans were 12 of 18 from the charity stripe on the day, including 8-for-10 in the fourth quarter. Senior Devin Guerre, who gave Holub fresh legs off the bench down the stretch, answered a Greene free throw with two of his own to get the Spartans within a point, 29-28. Senat’s pair with 43.4 seconds left put them ahead for good.

“We didn’t have a good day shooting, but we hit pressure shots from the line,” Holub said. 

“I didn’t go to the bench as much as I’m used to because we had matchups that we liked,” he added. But Guerre made a difference late.”

Half Hollow Hills West, the defending L.I. champion, boasts one of the top players in New York state, Tevon Sledge. The Iowa State-bound Sledge scored 116 points in four Suffolk Class AA playoff games, including a career-high 36 in a first-round win over Eastport South-Manor.

“We’ll be ready,” Dechalus said.