Durand's late basket spurs CSH

Katie Durand did not let her recently injured ankle keep her on the sidelines and the Cold Spring Harbor forward scored when her team needed it most.

Durand made her first basket of the game to put the Seahawks ahead 38-36 with 1:04 left in the fourth quarter.

"I was just trying to ignore my ankle and play my game," she said. "I was looking around and I didn't see a lot of openings for a shot and I just figured I'd take it myself and hope for the best."

Durand added a free throw with 17 seconds left to make it a two-possession game and sealed the win for No. 2 Cold Spring Harbor which defeated No. 3 Wheatley, 42-36, in a Nassau Class B girls basketball semifinal game at Port Washington Saturday afternoon.

After watching his team's seven-point lead slip away in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter, Cold Spring Harbor coach Rory Malone turned to Durand.

"When they started scoring basket after basket on us [I] figured just one basket would break it. [We] needed that one basket and once we had that it was all over," Malone said. "I brought [Durand] in hoping just her presence on the court would give us a lift. She made a huge shot and I really thought it broke their back."

Kelly Vassallo had 12 points, Gabrielle Doria added 11 points and 14 rebounds and Jean Atkinson had eight points for Cold Spring Harbor.

Doria was 7-for-8 from the free-throw line, including 5-for-6 in the final four minutes, to help the Seahawks regain the lead.

"I've been in situations like that to win the game and I've missed my foul shots. I know what it's like to walk away and be totally destroyed," Doria said. "I just thought about how much my team's depending on me to make these shots."

Rebecca Braito scored six of her 15 points in the fourth quarter to help Wheatley (9-9) temporarily regain the lead.

The Seahawks held a 24-15 lead at halftime thanks to an 18-2 run spanning eight minutes between the first and second quarter.

Cold Spring Harbor (15-3) will play No. 1 Carle Place (16-2), which defeated No. 4 Oyster Bay, 56-41, in the other semifinal, in the Nassau Class B final on Thursday at 1 p.m. at C. W. Post. It will be the fourth time the teams meet the season with Carle Place holding a 2-1 edge.

"There's definitely no love loss between us," Malone said. "One of our keys to [today's] game was 'let's get another chance at Carle Place.' That's what we were striving for; we want another piece of them."