The story of the Nassau County Class A championship game between Friends Academy and Floral Park was told in full during the briefest of moments near the end of the third quarter on Friday night.
With 57 seconds left on the clock, Quakers point guard Jax Saulter brought the ball over half court and was instantly besieged by three defenders who rushed toward him as if they were running downhill and couldn’t stop. With nowhere to dribble, Jax hurried a pass to his left, only to have the ball bounce out of bounds on a broken, disrupted play.
That kind of swarming, suffocating defense was the difference for the second-seeded Knights, who finished with a 70-53 victory over the fourth-seeded Quakers at Farmingdale State College.
A few minutes before he took on that blitzing triple-team some 40 feet from the basket, Jax had sat on the bench during a timeout and poured water from a cup into his eyes — as if questioning the realness of what he kept seeing.
Six days earlier, Jax had scored a game-high 18 points as he led Friends Academy to a 38-26 win over Lynbrook in the Nassau County semifinals. In the title game, the freshman was held to just two points — a driving layup from the left block midway through the second quarter — and he failed to get to the foul line the entire night.
Friends Academy trailed by only nine at halftime, 30-21. But Floral Park’s pesky, unrelenting defense proved to be too much; the Knights kept deploying either a half-court zone press or a man defense that focused on double- or triple-teaming Saulter every time he started to attack the basket or put a play in motion.
By the end of the third quarter, Floral Park had taken a 50-30 lead. Late in the fourth, that lead stretched to as many as 25 points.
“They’re a really good team,” Friends Academy coach Matt Johnsen says. “You have to be perfect to beat them, and we weren’t tonight. We fought hard. We hung with them for a bit, but they’re just a really good team.”
Despite the loss, all was not lost for the Quakers.
As runners-up in Section VIII, Friends Academy received an at-large bid to the NYSPHSAA boys’ basketball regional semifinals. The Quakers will face the Section IV champion (TBD) on Wednesday, March 11, at Johnson City High School. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:15 p.m.
“We still have another game to play, and getting this far is a great accomplishment for us,” Coach Johnsen says. “At one point this season our record was 7-8, but we were able to turn it around to get here. We can learn from this loss tonight, and we’re lucky we have another opportunity to make this right.”
Junior forward Chase O’Brien led the Quakers with 18 points on Friday night, while senior guard Henry Brett-Chin added 13. Senior guards Shane Kramer and Kai Jordan were the next highest scorers, adding five apiece.
“Our team is so resilient,” Coach Johnsen says. “We have so many leaders. The best part for us is that we have another opportunity to keep practicing and playing together, and we’re going to make the most out of it.”
Photos by Arnold Miller for Friends Academy