Apache Paschall said he had just enough time to say a prayer with time running out on his team’s season. Nazareth was trailing St. Anthony’s by two points with just seconds to play and the Friars’ Rebecca Musgrove heading to the line for a 1-and-1. The tears had already made their way down some of his players’ faces.
“I made a call to my Father and begged for him to extend this game a little bit more,” Paschall said. “And it worked out for us.”
The Lady Kingsmen made the unlikeliest of comebacks scoring four points in the final 9.8 seconds, including two game-sealing Darius Faulk free throws, for a heart-stopping, 46-44 win over St. Anthony’s in the CHSAA Class AA girls basketball quarterfinals Saturday at St. Dominic in Oyster Bay, L.I. Nazareth meets rival Christ the King 4 p.m. Sunday in the final for the right to head to Albany.
“It was like one of those things you watch in a movie,” senior forward Taylor Ford said. “Nine seconds left, down by two and all of a sudden all this good stuff happens.”
It started with Taylor bouncing the first free throw off the back of the rim. A quick midcourt outlet from Ford to Faulk, who had just turned the ball over after being trapped in the left corner, started a set play off a free throw miss that Paschall said his team ran to perfection. The junior fired a pass to a streaking Bra’Shey Ali for a layup to tie the score at 44 with 4.2 seconds left to play.
“We always have a person running,” Faulk said. “We work on it in practice. I knew Shey was going to be there.”
St. Anthony’s (25-3) called timeout to set up and inbounds play. Nazareth (27-3), ranked No. 12 in the country by USA Today, had a feeling the Friars would try a long pass and be able to use their athleticism to get a steal. St. Anthony’s senior Michelle Impellizeri ran along the baseline and locked on Rebecca Musgrove up the left sideline, instead of waiting for Taylor to release free into the middle. Jones, closing like a cornerback, tipped the lob pass from behind.
“I just said, ‘That’s my ball,’” the Syracuse-bound Jones said.
It landed into the hands of Faulk to the left of her. She went charging to the basket and was fouled with 1.3 ticks remaining. Faulk headed to the line for two shots after being mobbed by her smiling teammates under the hoop.
“I actually was calm,” she said. “If I smile before I shoot it, I’ll make it.”
She buried both and Ali stole the ensuing inbounds pass to send the Nazareth bench and its fans into a frenzy.
Ford scored 14 points and Faulk and Bianca Cuevas each had 10. Jones tallied all eight of her points in the fourth quarter, including two monumental 3-pointers. They along with a Cuevas trey helped give Naz a 40-37 lead with 2:53 to play. St. Anthony’s answered with a Taylor free throw and a 3-point play from Rebecca Musgrove. The Friars grabbed a 44-42 advantage on a jumper by Symone Kelly, who had 15 points, with 36.9 remaining. Impellizeri added nine.
“I was petrified,” Ford said. “I was trying to hold back the tears.”
The Lady Kingmen put themselves in that situation because they did not play their best basketball for three of the four quarters. A 19-2 run to end the second quarter, capped by a buzzer-beating, banked jumper from Cuevas, put Nazareth up 23-18 at the break. St. Anthony’s opened the third quarter with a 13-4 spurt of its own to take a 28-27 lead on an Impellizeri 3-point play with 1:19 left in the frame.
“The next teams are going to be better and better and better,” Paschall said. “We have to be better.”
Nazareth beat Christ the King two of the three times during the regular season with Royals All-American guard Bria Smith missing the CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Division I first-place tiebreaker. CK beat Paschall’s team, then at St. Michael Academy, in last year’s final, so there can be no counting on divine intervention this time around.
“We have to come out and just play hard,” Jones said. “That game, God was just by our side right there. It wasn’t ready for us to go.”
