Hold your breath Brooklyn basketball junkies. St. Francis College is two wins away from making it to the Big Dance – the schools first ever trip to the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament.
That after Brent Jones lit up a career-high 31 points in leading the top-seeded Terriers past their Brooklyn arch-rival LIU, 79-70, in a quarterfinal-round game in the Northeast Conference tournament last night.
St. Francis (21-10), is one of just five original Division I teams to never reach the NCAA tournament since the division’s inception in 1948. The other teams are Northwestern, Army, William & Mary and the Citadel
Next up for the Terriers is No. 5 seed St. Francis (Pa.) at home in Downtown Brooklyn, 180 Remsen Street, at 2 p.m. Saturday. The winner of the match up will face the winner of the other semifinals contest between No. 2 Robert Morris and No. 3 Bryant to determine who gets invited to March Madness.
While St. Francis came up big last night, the Brooklyn Nets came out cold in a disappointing 115-91 blowout loss to the Charlotte Hornets at the Barclays Center. Both the Nets and Charlotte are among six teams fighting for the last two seeds of the Eastern Conference in the NBA Playoffs.
Meanwhile, the borough’s best high-school boys basketball players and teams have no idea where they’ll be playing their championship semifinals this weekend, according to the Post.
Top-seeded Jefferson High School from East New York and Bed-Stuy’s Boys & Girls High School are scheduled to play in opposite brackets in the semis, but according to PSAL Website there are no locations for the games listed.
This has led to mass confusion and anger among panicked coaches, players and fans.
“This is a last-minute, fly-by-night operation,” said Jefferson Coach Lawrence Pollard told the publication. “I don’t know what’s going on there. If we did this as coaches or teachers, we would get fired.”
