When Keith Williams stepped past a Cardinal Hayes defender, shot off one foot and buried the ball at the buzzer to give Bishop Loughlin its biggest win of the season, it was a moment of redemption both for him and his team.
“It felt great,” Williams said. “Earlier in the season I passed up the opportunity to take that shot, and I knew I had to make up for it.”
It provided a happy ending for a young Lions team that showed great poise in a back-and-forth 58–56 home win over Cardinal Hayes in Catholic Class AA boys’ basketball last Friday night. Williams paced Loughlin with 23 points.
“I think they’re beginning to understand more,” said Loughlin coach Ed Gonzalez. “They understood what they had to do to get a big win tonight versus a good team like Cardinal Hayes. I think that they matured tonight.”
Loughlin’s young roster looked like veterans down the stretch. The Lions led 48–42 with four minutes left in the game. Hayes (11–7, 8–3) responded with a 14–10 run leaving Loughlin (7–8, 4–6) in need of some last-second heroics. Hayes was coming off a win over Long Island power Long Island Lutheran in the consolation game of the Sportsnet New York Invitational.
“We just stayed together tonight and kept pushing,” Williams said. “Cardinal Hayes is a tough team to beat. We just kept grinding.”
The game’s first two quarters were sloppy and it looked like no team wanted to grab momentum from the other. Loughlin woke up on offense in the second quarter, coming out on an 8–0 run to take the lead from Hayes, 16–12. After the run, Loughlin struggled to score and allowed Hayes to fight back. At halftime, Loughlin narrowly led 20–19.
Hayes came out on a quick 4–0 run, followed up by Loughlin going on a 13–7 run in the third quarter. Loughlin showed a little bit of urgency and went into the fourth quarter up 40–33 over Hayes.
A bright spot for Cardinal Hayes was the limited return of 6-foot-10, Manhattan College-bound center A.K. Ojo. The senior has been out the last five weeks with a knee injury, and only played about 10 minutes against Loughlin. The Cardinals’ coaching staff wants to ease the big man back into action to avoid another injury.
“We were hoping to get him 10–15 minutes tonight to build up his wind and build him up for the rest of the season,” said Cardinal Hayes coach Joe Lods. “He’s the biggest guy out there. Big guys are few and far between in the league. So when you get him back in the lineup, it’s a big positive.”
Hayes struggled from the free throw line throughout the night and struggled with turnovers early on in the contest. Still, it nearly pulled the game out. Senior guard Clive Allen prompted a late run by scoring 15 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter, but the run was too little too late.
“We just missed too many free throws,” Lods said. “We had a bunch of opportunities, but we just didn’t cash in on them. We had times where we had the ball in the right spot with the right players, and than we committed costly turnovers. We just need to get back to work. It’s a long season with hills and valleys. We’ll fix it.”
