Corey Edwards wasn’t having the best start to his junior season. A badly bruised left knee kept him on the bench for Christ the King’s opener Friday night and on Saturday the Royals point guard looked like someone who hasn’t been on a basketball court in two weeks.
But when the game was hanging in the balance, Edwards came up big, leading Christ the King to a 57-54 victory against Cardozo in the New Heights Holiday Hoop Festival at Rose Hill Gymnasium in The Bronx.
Edwards finished with seven points, six assists and six rebounds, but he really made an impact down the stretch. He sacrificed his body to draw a critical charge on Reynaldo Walters, knocked down a pair of clutch free throws and found Omar Calhoun deep off an inbound, all in the final 34.2 seconds of the fourth quarter.
“You’ve got to play through the pain,” said Edwards, who played without a protective brace in the second half. “I could have played better. We could have ended the game up by 10, but decision making [wasn’t good].”
In a similar high-profile game against a PSAL opponent last year, though, Edwards wilted down the stretch, taking a forced shot as Christ the King fell to Boys & Girls at St. John’s.
“I wasn’t 100 percent happy with him,” Christ the King coach Joe Arbitello said of Edwards. “We expect him to be our leader and down the stretch he was a bit erratic, but he’ll get it together. He just came back so he’s not in the flow of the game.”
Calhoun had 19 points and six rebounds and Maurice Barrow, a powerful 6-foot-5 senior forward, added 18 points and eight rebounds as Christ the King (2-0) bounced back from a slow start and took control of the game in the fourth quarter.
“I thought our maturity and our conditioning showed,” Arbitello said. “I thought we were getting up and down the floor, we were still playing hard. I thought our experience definitely helped us. Last year we had a similar situation against Boys & Girls. Our maturity wasn’t there yet.”
Early on it looked like Cardozo (5-1) would run away with the game, jumping in front, 10-0. Ryan Rhoomes, a 6-foot-8 junior forward, scored at will inside, finishing with a game-high 20 points. Dwayne Brunson added 11 and Shelton Mickell had 10.
But the Judges went away from pounding the ball inside and instead settled for ill advised outside jumpers and seemed to wilt down the stretch.
“Sometimes the kids don’t realize what is obvious to the obvious can be oblivious to the oblivious,” Cardozo coach Ron Naclerio said. “You have to know who to get the ball to, when to get the ball to them and how to play on a bad day.”
Christ the King has little time to rest on the victory. The Royals are back in action Sunday at St. Raymond’s, a CHSAA Class AA league game that was pushed back to a 5 p.m. start because of the inclement weather.
“It’s an ugly win, but a good win,” Arbitello said. “We came out here today, the [scheduled tip-off] got changed and we know we have St. Raymond’s tomorrow, so it’s a good win. I said before this started if we could be 3-0 after this stretch I’d be one very happy coach.”