Lawrence bounced in first round

On a night that saw defending Nassau Class A boys’ basketball champion Roslyn eliminated and top-seeded Elmont barely avoid a colossal upset, No. 3 South Side played as fine a half as it has all season on the way to a 56-41 victory over Lawrence before a crowd of 500 last Friday.

The Cyclones, Class A runners-up in each of the past two seasons, bolted to a 30-point halftime lead and cruised to their 14th win in 18 games. Senior Leon Taylor (14 points, six assists), junior Kevin Waxon (10 points) and sophomore Ryan Spadaford (10) all scored in double digits.

“We accomplished what we set out to do,” said South Side coach Jerry D’Angelo, whose team advanced to meet West Hempstead in a quarterfinal game at Hofstra on Friday at 5 p.m. “We played intense defense and did a lot of damage in transition.”

The 14th-seeded Golden Tornadoes, who scored 32 points in the second half after managing only nine through the first 16 minutes, got eight points from junior Lawrence Hanton and freshman Eddie Robinson. They finished 8-10 overall.

“South Side has a terrific program, but I think we built them up too much and came out scared,” Lawrence coach Pete Linderman said. “In the first half, we didn’t play how we played all season. We got back to doing what got us here in the second half, but we needed to play like that for four quarters to have a chance to win.”

The Cyclones, in their third game without senior guard David White, who was ruled ineligible Feb. 4, set the tone early with Taylor, senior Brett Cohen (eight points, 11 rebounds) and Spadaford forcing turnovers and scoring fast-break points. The lead was 17-4 after one quarter and ballooned from there. 

“Our last two days of practice before the snowstorm we stressed an attack mentality,” D’Angelo said. “We started the game with the same type of defensive intensity we started the season. We got aÙway from it a little bit in the second half, but I think the situation had something to do with it.”

The game got away from Lawrence in the second quarter. South Side went on an 18-0 run, capped by a Taylor dunk, and had 35 of the game’s first 39 points. The Golden Tornadoes made it respectable in the second half, outscoring the Cyclones 15-10 in the third and 17-7 in the fourth.

“Our goal was to make the playoffs, and I always believed it was possible,” Linderman said. “We had our ups and downs but worked extremely hard and came together as a team.”

South Side defeated West Hempstead twice en route to sharing the Conference ABC-I title with Elmont and Westbury, but D’Angelo knows it’s not easy to beat a team three times in a season.

“The first half was very slow and close in both games,” he said of the regular-season meetings with West Hempstead. “I’m hoping the longer court at Hofstra plays to our advantage.”