Jaylen Brown's three helps Baldwin win second straight county title
Baldwin celebrates after their victory over Port Washington in the Nassau Class AA championship on Saturday at Hofstra. Credit: Dawn McCormick
Baldwin needed an answer on Saturday night. Jaylen Brown had one. Again.
The Bruins had just seen the last of a five-point fourth quarter lead vanish when Port Washington’s Kenny Daly smoothly sank a three-pointer off an inbounds play to tie the Nassau Class AA championship game with 1:28 to play. It was the biggest possession of Baldwin’s season and Brown finished it with a three-pointer from the right corner off a feed from Peyton Howell with 59 seconds to go..
The Bruins never relinquished the lead as they made seven of eight free throws including both ends of three one-and-ones to pull out a 45-39 victory at Mack Sports Complex and claim their second straight county title.
Brown also hit a three-pointer with 10 seconds left to snap a tie and give the Bruins a semifinal win over Hempstead a week earlier.
“It seems I have a habit of doing that,” said Brown, who scored six of his eight points in the final minute. “It’s a mindset of staying confident . . . I handle [pressure] well.”
“It was a great shot – a big shot,” Baldwin coach Darius Burton said. “Anyone who didn’t believe Jaylen was one of the best shooters on Long Island can believe now.”
Baldwin (21-2) is county champion for the 10th time and sixth time in the past 11 years. The Bruins will face Suffolk champion Brentwood (18-7) in Saturday’s 4:30 p.m. Long Island Class AA championship game at Island Federal Arena. Baldwin will be seeking its fifth Island title and second in a row.
“We have a legacy thing going at Baldwin,” Brown said. “It’s a great accomplishment to know our teams will hang [in our gym] with the other great teams.”
“It’s an indirect pressure,” Burton said of the rich Baldwin basketball tradition. “No team wants to be one that didn’t keep it going.”
Dylan Madden had confided in his Bruin teammates earlier in the week that he had some nerves about performing in the title game. Brown said that honesty was met with encouragement and the senior’s nervousness never showed as he scored a game-high 14 points and went 4-for-4 on the free throw line in the last minute. Chase Timberlake added 11 points, six in the fourth quarter.
“I worked hard to prepare myself for this,” Madden said. “You can’t feel pressure if you’re Baldwin.”
Camren Welker had 12 points and Trevor Amalfitano added nine points for Port Washington (17-6), which just missed out on ending a title drought that dates to 1947. The Vikings missed nine free throws. Though they used a fouling strategy to get five final-minute possessions, they went 0-for-5 from the floor.
“They made the big three-pointer and almost all their free throws so you have to hand it to them,” Port Washington coach Sean Dooley said. “We didn’t stay poised the way we needed if we were going to win a game like this.”
The foundation for Baldwin always is its defense it had to perform well to slow the high scoring Vikings. The Bruins won all three of their meetings this season by an aggregate 13 points, but limited Port Washington to an average of 45 points in the three contests.
“They are a great offensive team, but our games against them showed that we are a great defensive team,” Burton said.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
