WINGS’ TIME TO FLY HIGH
Unbeaten in PSAL, Bronx power aims for city title
THE BASKETBALL playoffs are just around the corner in the PSAL. The borough championships start on Tuesday and the city playoffs begin two weeks later. Saturday represented the final game of the regular season for some of the league’s top teams, a last tune-up before the pressure of do-or-die contests sinks in.
The top teams from the Bronx ‘AA’ and Manhattan ‘A A’ divisions squared off at Thurgood Marshall Academy’s small court in Harlem, where the host Panthers gave championship contender Wings Academy all it could handle, but some timely 3-point buckets in crunch time pushed Wings to a 7468 victory to finish its PSAL docket undefeated at 17-0.
St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin looked on, keeping tabs on Wings’ star junior duo of center Jessie Govan and point guard Desure Buie.
“(Finishing undefeated is) real big, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is to win the whole thing,” said the highly-recruited 6-10 Govan, who has strong interest from Louisville, Seton Hall, UConn and Miami. He finished with a triple-double: 11 points, 13 rebounds and 10 blocks.
Thurgood Marshall clearly looked like a team that will be dangerous in the city playoffs for most of the game against a Wings team equipped for a title run. The Panthers trailed by as many as 13 late in the third but cut the deficit to four several times in the fourth. Wings got back-to-back 3-pointers from senior guard Corey Pierce (20 points) and Buie with 1:15 left, which extended the lead to 10 and gave Wings enough of a cushion during a foul-filled final stretch. Buie, who also boasts tons of Division I interest, finished with 10 points, 12 assists and five rebounds.
“Those are the plays you have to make during playoff time if you expect to win the whole thing,” Wings coach Billy Turnage said. “You’ve got to overcome adversity and fight through situations and deal it with.” With Buie starting slow and Govan riding the bench for most of the second quarter with two fouls — though the official scorer’s book only had him down for one — senior Foday Sankaray stepped up to carry the offensive load, sinking 15 of his 23 points in the first half.
“He played better than I thought he would because he came late to the game,” Buie said. “I just told him ‘Yo, Foday, you came late so now you gotta put in two times as much hard work because you didn’t get to warm up.’ He said ‘Alright, I got you,’ and he did what he said he was gonna do.”
Junior Division I prospect Dimencio Vaughn had 22 points and fellow senior Jhedayah (Juice) Gibbs had 21 points with five 3-pointers for the Panthers, who finished their league schedule 13-2.
Manhattan teams sometimes get shafted in seedings, but Thurgood Marshall coach Abdu-Allah Torrence feels his team deserves a topfour seed after playing Wings and Cardozo close and beating Westinghouse and Boys & Girls.
“I demand (respect) at the end of the day,” Torrence said. “Our schedule was competitive as anyone else in the city, outside of Lincoln. We played high competition and every game was a test.”