Verdict not to Cardozo’s liking

For all that went wrong, Cardozo was somehow still standing, surprisingly within striking distance of one of the city’s top clubs.
They lost their premier scorer, junior forward James Southerland, to a recurring ankle injury. They missed 12 of 28 free throws. A sloppy, sleepy third quarter put them in a 16-point hole.
But there they were, trailing by just three, 60-57, with 1:21 remaining, thanks to a furious 11-4 run in the closing minutes. Trinity Fields had just shaken off his nagging left hamstring strain to knock down a deep 3-pointer and then the judges got the ball back on a turnover with a chance to tie the game.
On the ensuing possession, Fields drove to the rim aggressively, the right play under the circumstances. When the defense rotated over to the junior point guard, he fed Edy Toussaint under the hoop.
Unfortunately, Toussaint came up short, Wings grabbed the defensive rebound, and raced ahead for Ronald Baker’s uncontested layup. The basket provided the necessary breathing room for third-seeded Wings’ 65-60 win over sixth-seeded Cardozo in the PSAL Class AA quarterfinals Sunday afternoon at St. John’s University’s Carnesecca Arena.
“We put ourselves back with the elite teams in the city,” Cardozo Coach Ron Naclerio said. “But winning this game would’ve been sweet to get back to the final four.”
Naclerio has said this year’s Judges, a group that includes five transfers, including Fields and Toussaint, would be stronger next year, with the continued emergence of Southerland and the development of freshman Chris Hampton, who missed the game with an injured wrist. That they fought back from such a large deficit only reinforced such a notion.
“We have a lot of kids that have some heart,” Naclerio said.
Fields led the Judges (21-5) with 20 points and Jaime Harris scored 22 for the Wings.
After two straight second-round losses, Naclerio took the glass half-full approach. “This is a lot better. These kids got to the third round. They earned a bye. We beat a good Jefferson team. We were right there with Wings.”
Even so, just a slight reduction in careless mistakes could’ve meant at least one more playoff game. For the departing seniors - Justin Garvin and Chris Abney, who wept underneath the far basket after the final horn - those miscues were hard to take. “Everything fell apart for us,” Garvin said. “People weren’t ready. … We weren’t playing defense. They got easy baskets.”
Fields lamented the continued trend of poor second-half starts. In this case, the Judges were outscored 17-4 in the first four minutes of the third quarter. “I hate halftime,” he said. “Halftime just breaks our momentum all the time. We just came out flat. They came out hard. When we realized this could be our last game, we came back.”
It wasn’t enough.