By Marc Raimondi
Blaise Ffrench watched from a few feet away as Christ the King senior Ryan Pearson threw down a ferocious dunk on Tyshawn Russell in the second quarter. To Russell's credit, he stood in there and took the offensive foul, but got a knee in the chest and a meeting with the floor for his troubles.
There was one thing going through Ffrench's mind as Russell, his teammate on the Holy Cross boys' basketball team, got posterized.
“I had to get [Pearson] back for that dunk he had on my friend Tyshawn,” he said with a smile.
And Ffrench did just that in a crucial third quarter. Two minutes after hitting a three-pointer right after Christ the King took its first lead of the game, Ffrench pulled off a nasty crossover on Pearson, sliced to the basket and made a layup while being fouled. The senior guard completed the three-point play with his uncle, rap mogul Irv Gotti, going crazy in the front row and Holy Cross went on to win, 77-69, in the CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Diocesan semifinals Wednesday night at St. Francis Prep HS.
Cross, seeded third in the B/Q playoffs, will meet top-seeded Bishop Loughlin, which beat No. 4 Xaverian in the other semifinal Thursday, in the final Friday night at St. Francis Prep. The Knights, who are the defending Brooklyn/Queens champions, beat the Lions twice in the regular season.
Christ the King, which was the second seed, will be the division's third seed in the citywide CHSAA intersectional playoffs, which begin Sunday.
The Royals will have the unenviable task of meeting one of two nationally ranked teams, Rice or St. Raymond's, in the quarterfinals either next Thursday or next Friday night. Rice and St. Ray's will meet in the Archdiocese final Saturday night. The loser will get CK, which means one of those three traditional NYC powerhouses will not make the city semifinals.
“That's why this game was so big,” Holy Cross coach Paul Gilvary said.
The Knights couldn't have pulled it off without star senior Sylven Landesberg, either. The Virginia-bound guard, fresh off his selection to the McDonald's All-American team, scored 11 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter. Landesberg knocked down a three-pointer after Erving Walker (20 points) cut the Cross lead to 64-63 with 3:00 left in the game and scored nine straight Knights points during one stretch of the final quarter.
“You're never gonna stop Sylven,” Christ the King coach Bob Oliva said. “He's a great player. You can only contain him for so long.”
Ffrench had 16 points, Kayvon Roberts had 12 points and Ernest Freeman added 10 points for Holy Cross. Pearson had 16 points, Sean Johnson had 13 and Anthony Martin added 11 for CK. Walker scored 11 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, but this time it was Landesberg who willed his team to the victory. The Royals beat the Knights twice in the regular season and in the first meeting, Walker came up huge in the fourth quarter and Pearson hit a hook-shot three-pointer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime.
There were just as many highlights Wednesday night, especially Pearson's dunk. The George Mason-bound forward did his best Dwight Howard impression, taking off a few steps in from the free-throw line and hammering it home with Russell getting bowled over in the process.
“The whole time I was thinking dunk,” Pearson said. “I didn't think he had the [guts] enough to stay in there.”
He did. So did Holy Cross.
Reach Associate Sports Editor Marc Raimondi by e-mail at mraimondi@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 130.
