By Stephen Zitolo
Cassidy Khan showed no fear in the big moment with the game on the line.
The senior guard and her Francis Lewis girls’ basketball teammates never gave up against South Shore in the rematch of last season’s PSAL Class AA city championship game. The defending champion Patriots kept themselves in position to win despite being outplayed for three quarters. Khan made sure that chance didn’t do to waste.
She made two free throws with no time left to give Francis Lewis a thrilling 71-70 road win Friday night.
With six seconds left, her frontcourt counterpart, senior guard Chi La Bady, fell to the floor to corral a poorly thrown inbound pass. Bady then found senior guard Robyn Francis with a pass and Francis quickly dished it to an open Khan on the left wing.
She drove to the basket and was fouled as time expired. Khan stepped to the line with her team down 70-69 and hit both of her free throws to get the Patriots (4-0) a hard-fought, come-from-behind victory.
“We were down most of the game, but we came through,” Khan said. “It wasn’t just my two foul shots that put us over the top. My teammates kept the game close enough and it allowed my two foul shots to win the game for us.”
The battle between the teams didn’t end there.
A brawl broke out among the squads after the postgame handshakes. When the fight began, fans from the bleachers rushed the court to both join in the fighting and to break up the scuffle. It was an ugly scene where the South Shore players had to be escorted out of the gym by school safety officers. The Francis Lewis players had to wait to leave the gym until they could be escorted out of the building to avoid another conflict.
“I didn’t see what happened,” Francis Lewis coach Steve Tsai said. “I was just concerned for my girls. Someone said a punch was thrown. But my main thing was to just focus on us and make sure we do things the right way.”
His team struggled through the first three quarters. They are a smaller group and had difficulties dealing with South Shore’s 6-foot-3 senior forward Brianna Fraser. The Maryland commit scored 11 of her 17 points in the first quarter. Her length and abilities in the low post got the Vikings (4-1) off to a fast start. Francis Lewis guard Dominique Williams led all scorers with 19 points.
Even though they seemed to be outplayed for most of the night, Francis Lewis entered the fourth quarter only down 52-46. Something clicked in the final quarter for the Patriots, as they opened the quarter on a 10-4 run to tie the score at 56 with five minutes left in the fourth, setting the stage for Khan’s clutch free throws.
