60.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Baldwin reaches fifth straight final
Bruins squeak by GNS
Baldwin’s shooting touch was nowhere to be found last Saturday afternoon at SUNY-Old Westbury, but the top-seeded Bruins had the fortitude to overcome a scare from No. 5 Great Neck South in a Nassau Class AA boys’ basketball semifinal.
Junior Brandon Williams scored five points in the final 2:22, including just the third three-pointer for Baldwin on 16 attempts, to help it escape with a 54-49 victory and advance to a fifth straight county championship game. Williams had a game-high 17 points and senior Kyle Richardson added 11 for the Bruins, who trailed by three at halftime. Ben Kestenbaum led the Rebels with 16.
“Even though we didn’t do a lot of things well, we found a way,” Baldwin head coach Darius Burton said. “We did a nice job on the offensive boards and adjusted our press in the second half. Great Neck South deserves a lot of credit. They were in it the whole way.”
Junior Kirk Staine put Baldwin ahead for good, 43-42, with a layup with 6:36 remaining, but the Rebels stayed within striking distance down to the wire. Neither team led by more than six points.
“We scrimmaged them early in the season and knew this would be a tough game,” Richardson said. “We took good outside shots but nothing was falling. Coach told us to attack the basket, make free throws and get our rhythm back.”
The Bruins (16-3) will face No. 2 Elmont (17-2) in the title game next Saturday at Hofstra at 1 p.m. Both teams lost in the finals last March. Baldwin fell to Uniondale in Class AA, while Elmont came up short against Westbury in Class A. The Spartans plowed through Hempstead in last Saturday’s other semifinal, 66-42.
“It should be a great matchup,” Burton said. “Elmont has great size and a strong backcourt. We’ll need to shoot better than we did today to beat them.”
Williams and senior Aaron Greene each hit a trey in the first quarter against Great Neck South as the Bruins, coming off a 39-point quarterfinal blowout victory over Bellmore-JFK, rallied from four points down to lead by two. But the perimeter game failed them miserably until Williams found the net in front of Baldwin’s bench to give them a 48-44 lead.
