Thursday, October 1, 2026
West Hempstead’s journey for a repeat is off to a sterling start but the Rams know it only gets tougher.
After winning the Class B Nassau County and Long Island boys’ basketball championships last season, West Hempstead has moved up to the tougher Class A.
Hosting much-improved Lynbrook on Feb. 20 in the quarterfinals, West Hempstead rolled to a 70-44 behind 18 points and 14 rebounds from star forward Isaiah Blunt.
Third-seeded West Hempstead notched 17 steals en route to the victory as it took a 20-8 lead after one quarter and 35-16 at halftime. Lynbrook’s renaissance season ended at 11-11.
“On offense, we really shared the basketball,’’ West Hempstead head coach Eric Rubin said. “We stressed it doesn’t matter who scores as long as we score. We may have forced one shot all game. For a high school team, that’s really good.’’
It sets up a massive showdown against Valley Stream North in the semifinals on March 5 at Farmingdale State College at 8 p.m. West Hempstead lost by 1 point to the Spartans in mid-January.
Rubin admits this competition isn’t quite as comfortable as Class B. “It’s a challenge we’re looking forward to,’’ Rubin said. “We’ll see how good we are.’’
Along with Blunt’s superior game, Evan Wilson added 17 points and Alex Davis13. “I thought our defense was incredible,’’ Rubin said. “We were very intense. We wanted to put pressure on them. It was nice to see.’’
West Hempstead will need Blunt, who will play college ball, to play against Valley Stream North as he did versus Lynbrook. “He might’ve had his best game of the season,’’ Rubin said. “He was a beat on the boards, shared the basketball well. Whenever we needed him, he scored a basket.”
West Hempstead moved to 14-7 - co-champions of League 8 with Cold Spring Harbor.
Meanwhile, Lynbrook had nothing to be ashamed of during a robust 2024-25 campaign in which it doubled its victory total from last season, beat everyone in its conference at least once and notched its first playoff win since 2019 when it took out. Island Trees on Feb. 14.
“The future is definitely bright,’’ head coach Brian Donaldson said. “We return 13 guys from this year’s team. Hopefully we can build upon the success we had this year.’’
The sixth-seeded Owls just couldn’t keep up with West Hempstead. Lynbrook was led by Ismar Purisic with 11 points.
“They did a great job getting out in transition,” Donaldson said. “They’re a super quick team. They were able to get a lot of steals and attack in transition off turnovers.’’
Lynbrook’s improvement was shown mostly on defense. Last season the Owls ranked 53 out of 59 teams in points per game. In 2024-25, Lynbrook was ranked 7th.
They will lose seniors Michael Werzinger and Purisic to graduation. “We had strong senior leadership and we’ll miss them both on the court and off the court,’’ Donaldson said.
