By Dylan Butler
In the end, it was all Skyler Khaleel could think about.
The senior on the Cardozo boys’ basketball team did not think about the thunderous dunk he delivered or playing for a city championship in front of 12,021 — including rapper Jay-Z and director Spike Lee — at Madison Square Garden.
All Khaleel could dwell on moments after the Judges’ 74-65 loss to Lincoln March 17 was how close his team was to spoiling Sebastian Telfair’s coronation.
“We had them,” Khaleel said.
He said it over and over as if the repetition of the phrase would somehow take away the sting of its reality. Despite being the top-seed, Cardozo was clearly the underdog and played the two-time defending PSAL Class A champs a lot closer than many expected.
Khaleel’s 14 points and 11 rebounds were not enough, nor were Dwayne Johnson’s team-high 19 points despite his being bloodied by a cut lip in the third quarter.
Not on this night.
Not on a night that was supposed to be Telfair’s final shining moment as a high school demigod but ended up being Eugene Lawrence’s coming out party.
Lawrence, who was the center of controversy at the start of the season after transferring from Canarsie before his senior year, was named the game’s MVP after a 14-point, 10-rebound and four-steal outing.
The senior guard picked up Telfair’s slack through three tight quarters and tied the game for the Railsplitters at 51 with 45 seconds left in the third quarter on a steal and a layup.
Yuri Matsakov’s tip-in beat the third-quarter buzzer and gave No. 3 Lincoln (24-5), which split a pair of regular season matchups with Cardozo, a lead it would not relinquish.
“Definitely worth it,” Lawrence said of his move before his senior year. “I needed to do it for me. I needed to get more exposure.”
Telfair, the Louisville-bound point guard who is expected to jump straight to the NBA, finished with a game-high 25 points — 17 coming in the second half — but shot just 8-for-19 and had three assists and four turnovers.
With Telfair struggling in the first half, Cardozo (28-5) had an excellent chance to steal the game. But starters Theo Davis, one of the most highly sought after juniors in the country, and Drew Gladstone picked up three fouls apiece in the first half.
Davis, a 6-foot-10 transfer from Toronto, never got into a rhythm. He scored just four points and grabbed 12 rebounds in 25 minutes. Gladstone had as many points as fouls in just six minutes.
“I guess those are some of the calls you get when you’re the defending champion,” Davis said. “Every time I play Lincoln, I end up sitting on the bench because of foul trouble.”
The game, which featured an array of dazzling dribbling and passing exhibitions by both teams, was tight throughout. After playing to a 13-13 tie in the first quarter, Lincoln went into halftime with a 28-25 lead on a Telfair putback.
Lincoln went up by five less than a minute into the third quarter, but Cardozo answered with a 9-2 run to take a 44-42 lead on a Khaleel layup.
But in a game that had 12 lead changes and 12 ties, Lincoln took over in the fourth quarter. Telfair, who was named New York state’s Mr. Basketball, scored six points in the opening three minutes of the quarter to put the Railsplitters ahead, 63-54, with 4:19 left.
“In a game like this, one play changes the momentum so much,” Cardozo coach Ron Naclerio said. “I was hoping to be down one or two with a minute left but seven, eight became too much.”
Vic Morris came off the bench to score 16 points but shot 7-of-17 including 0-for-4 from three-point range. Nick Flagg returned from his one-game suspension for an altercation against Benjamin Banneker in the quarterfinals to score nine points for Cardozo, which won the PSAL title in 1999.
Flushing native Antonio Pena had 15 points and eight rebounds and Nyan Boateng added 10 points for Lincoln, which became the first team in the 100-year history of the PSAL to win its third consecutive crown.
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
