Boyd, McCrimmon help Hempstead to upset
Hempstead High School #45 Mical Boyd drains a three pointer with under three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter to give his team a 52-51 lead over Freeport in a Nassau County Class AA varsity boys basketball quarterfinal at Freeport High School. (Feb. 22, 2011) Credit: James Escher
Live by the three; die by the three. Yesterday, Hempstead nearly did both.
It was Mical Boyd's three with 2:23 left that helped erase a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit, gave the Tigers their first lead, and made the standing room only crowd in the Freeport gym stand up and all but yell, "It's alive!"
Jump forward about one minute and one Aaron McCrimmon trey later, when Hempstead got to experience the second half of that adage. Down by four and his own season on life support, Freeport's Leondre Simmon sank a three, but the Red Devils' next two attempts - both from behind the arc - failed, as No. 6 Hempstead upset No. 3 Freeport, 55-54, in a Nassau Class AA quarterfinal.
"I was hot the whole game," said Boyd, who finished with 14 points, nine from the perimeter. "I had the ball in my hands . . . I was confident."
Hempstead (13-6) trailed from the opening minutes on the back of an 18-11 first quarter that included three steals by Freeport's Jere Brown (19 points), all converted. Brown's scoop shot and Malek Lewis' layup gave Freeport a 47-35 lead to end the third - its biggest advantage of the day.
Hempstead found its pulse, though, using its physical, fast-paced play to break Freeport's full-court press with some consistency in the opening seconds of the fourth. Tywan Watson's layup, Brandon Underwood's driving layup and Ismael Pierre's lay in accounted for the first six points and Pierre's converted steal with 3:03 left cut the lead to 51-49 and set up Boyd's lead-grabbing three.
Meanwhile, the Tigers' high-pressure defense limited Freeport (14-5) to two field goals in the fourth. Pierre finished with 19 points, 12 rebounds and six assists. Underwood, a senior, posted a career-high 16 rebounds and Watson, a sophomore, had a career-high 10 assists.
"They knew they had to play to win," Hempstead coach Ted Adams said. "They had to give everything all the way down to the buzzer, and they never heard a buzzer."
Freeport heard it, all right. Their final two three-point attempts came with fewer than 20 seconds left - the second, a shot from the far right corner that bounced off the iron at the buzzer.
Adams, who won his 500th career game last Friday, said there was still work to do, starting with No. 2 Elmont, Saturday at SUNY-Old Westbury.
"We've done nothing," he said. "We did what it took . . . we have to work like we've done nothing."
Nothing except live to play another day.
