By Dylan Butler
You don't need Kevin Bacon to figure out the connections between the two schools. Before Ivan Cohill became the head coach at Cathedral, Frank McQuail was on the bench.McQuail is now the principal at Bowne and Cohill is a physical education teacher at the school, which begs the question: Was this game, won by Bowne, 63-52, mandated by the principal?”Of course,” Cohill joked. “He even made a cameo appearance.”When McQuail was asked which team he was rooting for, he sounded very much like an administrator and just to drive in his point he sat nearly at midcourt.”I'm rooting for getting out of here in an hour and watching my boys play a CYO game,” he said of his two sons.The commingling of the programs aside, both teams were just happy to be back on the court after a week of Regents exams.John Bowne (12-10) is in a dogfight for the No. 2 spot in Queens II-A behind Cardozo and looked every bit a team that hadn't played in a week. The Wildcats saw its 15-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter sliced to just five with 3:19 left.”I knew there was going to be that rust factor,” Bowne coach John Tsapelas said. “There was sloppiness. We never have more than one day off at a time.But that's when Cathedral Prep, which played well in spurts, looked like the 1-15 team that it is. Missed free throws and turnovers in three consecutive possessions in the final 2:30 allowed Bowne to score the final eight points of the game.”We tried to force things we're not capable of doing,” Cohill said. “We've got to stick to what we can do and we'll be alright.Kevin Samuels had 12 points, Lesley Princivil had 11 and Collins Banks added 10 for Bowne while Cathedral was led by Nick Fessler, who scored 18 points.Reach Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
