By Dylan Butler
A pair of free throws by Leyla Sak sent the Bayside girls’ basketball team into the fourth quarter of its PSAL Class B semifinal game against top-seeded Bronx Leadership with its largest lead of the game, 32-26.
For Gayle Silverstein and the Commodores, it was time to start making plans.
During the break some of the players wondered who was sticking around to watch the second ‘B’ semifinal and began to talk about playing in the championship game Thursday at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
But eight minutes later, with tears welling up in their eyes, many of the Bayside players made plans to meet back on the softball diamond in a few weeks after defending champion Bronx Leadership scored the first eight points of the fourth quarter and outscored No. 5 Bayside, 20-6, in the final stanza to rally for a 46-38 win Sunday morning at St. John’s University.
“We all thought we were going all the way,” said Silverstein, the Commodores’ sharpshooter who scored just 6 points. “When we started to lose we just started to lose faith and hope, and we went down from there.”
Bronx Leadership (23-2) will face Grand Street Campus, which defeated Brandeis, 56-42, in the other semifinal.
For much of the season, Bayside (23-5) relied on perimeter shooting and an up-tempo offense while frustrating teams with its full-court press.
But against Bronx Leadership, which successfully slowed the pace of the game, the Commodores shot just 10.7 percent (3-for-28) from three-point range while shooting just 22.5 percent from the field (14-for-62).
Bronx Leadership wasn’t much better, shooting 28.3 percent from the field (15-for-53) and 20 percent from beyond the arc (3-for-15).
“It just wasn’t our style. We like to run and gun, and today we had to walk the ball up the court,” Silverstein said. “We’re an outside team and we weren’t getting open for shots. We weren’t playing how we’re used to playing.”
Worried about another foul-fest, which was the case in the team’s quarterfinal win against rival Van Buren, Bayside coach Steve Piorkowski held off the press until the start of the third quarter and the move paid immediate dividends.
Bronx Leadership turned the ball over nine times in the third quarter as Bayside broke an 18-18 halftime tie to take a six-point lead into the final quarter.
Despite playing without starters Katie Gilbert (academically ineligible) and Josette Plata (“physical condition,” according to BLA coach Roxan Escobar), Bronx Leadership rallied behind Porscha Williams.
Playing in her first true high-stakes game, Williams came up huge, scoring all seven of her points in the second half, including an 18-footer with 1:34 left in the fourth quarter that gave Bronx Leadership a 40-36 lead.
“The girl can shoot,” Escobar said of Williams. “The only thing I said to her is if you’re open, don’t be afraid to take a shot.”
Vanessa Rivera scored a game-high 12 points and Whittney Barnes added 6 for Bronx Leadership, which turned the ball over just four times in the fourth quarter.
Cadesha Pearson scored 8 points before fouling out with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Allie Falco added 6 points for Bayside, which had 11 fourth-quarter turnovers, including two in the final 24 seconds.
“We’re not a good offensive team if they put man-to-man pressure on us. We don’t seem to handle pressure on us,” said Piorkowski, who will also coach many of his players when softball season starts in less than a month. “If they stayed in a 3-2 zone, we would have kept shooting. We had open looks but we just didn’t hit them.”
“They figured out some of our plays on inbounds,” Falco said. “If we could’ve hit a couple shots … we just didn’t get it done.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by email at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
