Cyclones squeeze past Rams

The third time against South Side was almost a charm for West Hempstead.

The sixth-seeded Rams threw their best punch in last Friday’s Nassau Class A boys’ basketball quarterfinal playoff game at Hofstra, but it wasn’t enough to deliver a knockout. The No. 3 Cyclones prevailed, 46-44, behind Leon Taylor’s 16 points and Brett Cohen’s nine points and 10 rebounds.

“We played four quarters against them for the first time and had a great opportunity at the end,” West Hempstead coach Ed Cosgrove said moments after Cameron Mitchell’s shot that would’ve forced overtime rimmed out at the buzzer. “We wanted to keep the game in the 40s or 50s,” he added. “The kids played hard and left everything they had on the floor.”

South Side, which beat the Rams by 19- and 15-point margins during the regular season, improved to 15-4 and will face No. 2 Westbury in a semifinal game on Friday at 6 p.m. at Hofstra. Julian Clark (11), Darnell Davy (10) and Daniel Minto (10) all scored in double figures for West Hempstead, which finished 4-15 overall. Jamel Flash added eight points, 13 rebounds and six blocks.

“I like the way we responded in the fourth quarter,” said South Side coach Jerry D’Angelo, whose team trailed by as many as five points in the second half. “They battled us every possession and did a great job on the boards. They slowed us down, but we were able to make some big shots late in the game.”

Down 35-30 with the clock winding down in a third quarter that saw Davy score six points, Kevin Waxon beat the buzzer with a trey that gave the Cyclones momentum. After Darren Nickelson and Davy traded baskets early in the fourth, South Side began to take over. Taylor’s pretty reverse layup and free throw with 6:20 left put it ahead for good, but the Rams didn’t go away despite an 11-point run led by Julius Jones (eight points).

West Hempstead faced a 46-37 deficit when Clark sank his third trey of the night with 2:04 to go to cut the difference to six. Minto and Clark followed a defensive stop with a basket, and with 27 seconds remaining it was a one-possession game. “Julian’s confidence in his shot grew every game,” Cosgrove said of Clark, who hit three treys in a first-round playoff win over Roslyn.

After Waxon missed the front end of a one-and-one with 15.8 seconds left, Cosgrove set up a play he said included a lot of options. The Rams’ choices were limited 11 seconds later after they retained the ball out of bounds, but Mitchell managed to get off a high-percentage shot from 10 feet. “It came down to one possession and Cameron’s shot went in-and-out,” Cosgrove said. 

After surviving a scare, the Cyclones are one win away from a third straight appearance in the Class A title game.

“We still have some work to do,” D’Angelo said. “Westbury got the best of us twice and we’ll see if we can do a better job. We’ll study a lot of film and try to correct what we did wrong.”