The Bloodhounds (12-15) will now face top-seeded and two-time defending champion York College (20-7), which beat Hunter College 89-77 earlier in the evening, for the conference title and an automatic berth to the NCAA Division III Championships on Friday night (Feb. 22) at 7:45 p.m. The game will be broadcast live on Time Warner Cable Channel 199 in New York City.
After trailing nearly the entire game, John Jay took a 61-59 lead on Garcia’s second three-pointer of the night. The play of CUNYAC First Team All-Star Jamaal Hall would keep City Tech close, however, and the Bloodhounds only led 69-66 after a pair of Hall free throws with 1:37 remaining. The two teams then exchanged a Hakeem Kased free throw for John Jay and an Andrew Vaughn jumper for City Tech over the next pair of possessions to leave the Bloodhounds up 70-68 with a minute left on the clock.
A free throw by Chris Jaeger (18 points, nine rebounds) with 23 seconds to go moved John Jay further ahead, 71-68, and set up a furious sequence in the final seconds. Omar Mahoney missed a three-point attempt for the Yellow Jackets with nine seconds remaining but LaShawn Doyle grabbed the offensive rebound and hit a long shot he thought was a game-tying trey. His foot was on the line, however, and the shot turned out to be a two-pointer that left City Tech trailing 71-70 with six seconds left.
Miguel Garcia (18 points) then hit two pressure-packed free throws a second later to give the Bloodhounds a 73-70 advantage. Hall brought the ball up the court but, heavily guarded, forced a desperation pass that went just past a teammate’s hands out of bounds allowing John Jay to claim the thrilling victory.
Last weekend, both the #6 Bloodhounds (63-59 winners over #3 Staten Island) and the #7 Yellow Jackets (88-78 winners over #2 Brooklyn) were surprise victors on the road in the quarterfinals.
A first team all-conference player this season, Hall came out strong from the opening tip, following a triple-double effort in the quarterfinals with 17 first half points to lead all scorers. The Yellow Jackets (8-19), who led by as many as nine points at the 14:15 mark, had an five-point advantage going into the break. The Bloodhounds’ only lead of the half was at 1-0 after a Hakeem Kased (eight points, six rebounds) free throw early on.
In the second half, John Jay cut the deficit to one at 39-38, on an Emilio Gomez layup at 15:59 remaining, but neither team could score for the next minute and a half, and Hall once again put the Yellow Jackets in command with a pull up jumper from the foul line. But the Bloodhounds managed a 7-0 run from the nine minute mark to the six minute mark, seizing control of the momentum and fouling out the Yellow Jackets’ center Ian Sowell (six points, six rebounds) in the process. John Jay’s Vaughn Mason added 15 points in the victory, including nine in the second stanza.
“We had more space to create when Sowell fouled out,” said John Jay head coach Charles Jackson. “We seemed to excel with more space around the basket. That hasn’t happened as much as it should have all season. But we’ve been gearing toward the CUNY Championships.”
From that point on, the Bloodhounds could smell victory, grabbing a five point lead at 69-64 with just under two minutes remaining. The only man that could stop them was Hall, who scored seven straight points to keep the deficit to two points. Hall finished with a game high 31 points, seven rebounds, and four assists. His teammate, Ryan Phillip chipped in with 20 points and 10 rebounds.
“I’ve been using the word ‘insignificant’ a lot lately,” said Jackson. “In recent years John Jay men’s basketball has been, for lack of a better word, insignificant, and we’d like to change that. Getting to the final is the first step.”
Courtesy of CUNY Athletic Conference
