Wings Academy coach Billy Turnage looks on in disappointment. (Denis Gostev)
Billy Turnage told his kids how proud he was of them, for what they accomplished this season and how they played Wednesday night.
His third-seeded Wings Academy team gave defending champion and No. 2 Boys & Girls all it wanted, fighting tooth and nail until the end in a crushing 53-48 loss in a PSAL Class AA semifinal at CCNY’s Nat Holman Gymnasium.
The fifth-year coach was proud – but he was also in pain. This season was about finally getting to the Garden and his team fell five points short.
“I don’t know what I did,” Turnage said with a melancholy smile, “to piss off the basketball gods.”
It wasn’t so much the basketball gods, but the gritty Kangaroos that did in Wings (25-4), which held several leads in the second half but never could build enough breaking room. Boys & Girls could – it took a 48-40 lead with 4:00 remaining after a 9-0 run Mike Taylor (10 points) capped with a 3-pointer – and held on down the stretch.
Wings got as close as three, with 13 seconds left, but Houston missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer from the top of the key and Malik Nichols (game-high 22 points) iced it with a pair of free throws on the other end. More than several missed opportunities on offense, Turnage lamented Wings’ 21 turnovers, many of them crippling fourth-quarter miscues.
“You can’t give anybody 21 extra possessions — that killed us,” Turnage said. “It just can’t happen.”
The two teams met in this game last year, with Boys & Girls prevailing, 76-52, en route to its first city championship in 31 years. From the jump, this showdown had a different feel. Wings rebounded from a sloppy start to trail by just 28-25 at halftime. The Wings opened the half on a 7-0 run – all from Houston, the senior still looking for a Division I scholarship offer who scored 13 points. Gerrell Martin led Wings with 14 and Amdy Fall had 11.
“I’ve been saying it all year: The kid is a winner,” Turnage said of Houston. “He gives you what you need.”
Unfortunately for Wings, Houston didn’t score again, hounded by Boys & Girls (23-6) point guard Antione Slaughter and what Turnage called a “rover,” a secondary defender as help. It forced the ball into the hands of Yosimar Bernardez and sixth man Justin Jenkins, who struggled against the Kangaroos’ pressure.
“You can’t say enough about the little big guy,” Boys & Girls coach Ruth Lovelace said of the 5-foot-6 Slaughter.
Wings will be a completely different team next year as Martin heads to LIU whereas Fall and Houston look for schools. The group enjoyed a memorable season, going undefeated in The Bronx for the first time in Turange’s tenure and won its fourth borough crown in five years.
“We made a lot of people realize that we’re a force to be reckoned with,” Martin said. “Hopefully Amdy and Deonte get schools and all the other seniors. They deserve it. They played their hardest.”
Turnage, meanwhile, said he will watch the game’s tape in a few weeks, to try to figure out what he can do differently next March. He returns a solid core in Bernardez, forward Steve Gomez and Jenkins, a star in the making.
“I gotta see what I can do different to get over the hump,” he said. When asked what that may be, Turnaged shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said.
