Giant Killers

The last four years, Campus Magnet and Cardozo have dominated the borough from a public school standpoint. The Bulldogs won the Queens title last year; the Judges took home the trophy the previous three times.
Now, there is a new champion. Meet the Thomas Edison Engineers, Queens Giant Killers.
The Jamaica Estates school won their first-ever borough title Saturday afternoon at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, taking down No. 2 Campus Magnet, 70-61, two days after they shocked top-seeded Cardozo. The fifth-seeded Engineers upset No. 4 Bayside in the opening round.
“We came in with confidence,” said senior center Devin Brown after Edison (17-2) earned its 16th straight victory. “We beat Cardozo, so if we beat them we felt we had just as good of a chance against Campus Magnet.”
Point guard Allan Thomas led four Engineers in double figures with 24 points, including 12 in the final quarter, to earn MVP honors. Brown controlled the paint and finished with 18 and 13 rebounds, Stephon Hodges had 11 and Gregory Steele added 10. Keith McAllister led Campus Magnet (19-9) with 16 points but leading scorer Malachi Peay, who fouled out in the third quarter, managed just 14.
Storylines abound. Thomas, Edison’s talented junior, suited up in only three games last year because of academic ineligibility. The coach, John Ulmer Jr., who grew up playing lacrosse on Long Island, took over a moribund program last winter - Edison had won two league games the previous two seasons - and in two years has turned it into a legitimate title contender in the PSAL’s A division.
And add this to a truly surreal accomplishment: In the first year of citywide realignment, three teams from the new super division, Queens AA, lost to the same Edison club, who shared the Queens A-West division title with John Adams in the supposedly less-competitive league.
Edison improved last year under Ulmer, who doubles as the school’s baseball coach, winning five times and finishing just under .500 at 10-11. Despite such improvements, he couldn’t get the borough’s top teams, programs such Cardozo and Campus Magnet, to agree to play them in non-league contests.
“They were all booked or couldn’t play us,” he recalled. “At least we had our chance to play them now.”
Edison started slow, falling behind by 10, 28-18, early. Porous defense enabled Peay to score all 14 of his points in the opening quarter, but the Engineers kept attacking, and when the Campus Magnet swingman, along with McAllister, was forced to the bench with three fouls apiece, they reeled off a 12-2 run to get even.
Their luck only continued after halftime - Thomas drew a questionable charge on Peay, his fifth and final infraction, with 5:17 left in the third quarter and Edison leading by three. “It was real hard sitting on the bench,” Peay said. “I knew that I set my feet; I did everything.”
It was the opening Edison needed to take command. Thomas iced the victory with a one-handed slam and a pretty left-handed runner in the lane in the waning moments. Afterward, of the all the Engineers, his smile - for good reason - was the broadest.
“I feel like I came from the bottom,” he said, referring to the frustration of last year when he took summer classes just to get back on track academically. “I knew I had let my team down because I wasn’t working hard.”
Thomas’s reformation is just part of the basketball renaissance at Edison since Ulmer took over. Before he arrived, practices were rarely taken seriously and losing was expected. “It was people trying to be stars,” Brown said.
But Ulmer instilled discipline and a no-nonsense approach that has obviously gotten through to his players. Prior to this weekend, there was just one boys basketball banner hanging in the Thomas Edison gymnasium, a 1994-95 Queens A-I division title.
Now, thanks to a young coach, a superstar who finally got his head screwed on tight, and an unthinkable playoff run, they’ve doubled that number.