It was a freak accident at a practice in early January when Rian Gittens heard the pop in his knee and immediately thought the worst.
“I thought my season was over,” the senior forward said.
It was another example of adversity in a season full of it for the Baldwin boys basketball team.
So when the Bruins were slow coming out of the gate and trailed by 13 in the second quarter of the Nassau Class AAA championship game Saturday night, it was just the latest obstacle for Baldwin to hurdle.
Enter Gittens, who in his first game back from a torn MCL provided the needed offensive spark to help top-seeded Baldwin defeat Port Washington, 47-40, to win a sixth consecutive county title at Farmingdale State College.
Baldwin (21-2) advances to take on Bay Shore in the Long Island Class AAA championship game at Farmingdale State College on Wednesday at 5 p.m.
“The sky is the limit for us,” Gittens said. “I want a state championship. I want to give my coach a state championship. I know he wants it bad.”
Before the first regular-season game, the Bruins were already down two of the top post players in Nassau County when cousins Dylan Cudjoe and Gabe Phillips suffered season-ending torn ACLs. And then Gittens went down in early January.
Still, Baldwin never wavered.
“Adversity, it’s a running thing here, but it’s always next man up mentality,” senior point guard Ethan Sainsbury said. “It’s always next play up.”
And while head coach Darius Burton said his team’s slow start, which resulted in a 19-6 deficit in the second quarter, was “unfamiliar territory,” he was confident his team could rebound against second-seeded Port Washington.
“We never started the game like this,” Burton said. “I don't know if it was jitters, but I knew we would come along and settle down, and it’s been our defense. And we locked up.”
And Gittens locked in. He buried three 3-pointers in the second quarter to spark the comeback en route to a team-high 14 points. And on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Mekhai St. Louime, the Bruins sprinted into the locker room with a 24-21 halftime lead.
“Shout out to all my teammates. They gave me the ball in the right position,” Gittens said. “I wasn’t on the scouting report. All I do is knock it down. That’s all I did.”
Port Washington’s Billy Edelstein responded by burying three of his five 3-pointers in the third quarter as the Vikings (17-6) took a 34-33 lead into the fourth quarter.
“I told them, this is what we’re here for. You want to see the LIC? You want to make it six in a row, we’ve got to get stops, and we've got to make scores,” Burton said. “And I think we got stops. We got important rebounds and made important free throws down the stretch. We found a way to win.”
Sainsbury (9 points, 5 assists, 4 rebounds) went 3-of-4 from the foul line in the fourth quarter, and Jordan Williams sank a huge free throw to secure yet another county title, one that put Sainsbury, a four-year varsity player, in the school’s record books.
“I put on a Baldwin jersey since I was in ninth grade, 14 years old,” Sainsbury said. “The leaders on the team before they always taught me how to win. I hope I made them proud today by being the first one to win four.”
