Wings Academy coach Juan L. Gonzalez celebrates his team’s victory. (Denis Gostev)
Tyler Moses, tears streaming down her face, ran toward the stairs to the top of the stands.
In the third quarter of the PSAL Class A girls basketball championship game at St. Francis College with her Wings Academy trailing Curtis, a scrum involving Moses’ grandmother, mother and friend broke out in the top bleachers of the Brooklyn school.
Referees, her teammates and Wings coaches shouted at Moses to return to the bench as the game was halted to restore order in the gym. After a 10-minute delay, the junior forward had one of the biggest baskets of the game, a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter that got her team within two points.
“I turned all my emotions and crying and anger into the game,” Moses said.
Top-seed Wings did the same thing, storming back from a six-point, fourth-quarter deficit to beat No. 10 Curtis, 46-43. Lady Wings senior Aquillin Hayes drained a long trey with 2.3 seconds left to unbreak a 43-all tie and give the small school their first-ever girls basketball championship.
“It was a difficult shot,” said Hayes, who verbally committed to New Haven right after the game. “I was kind of off balance. I’m not gonna take it back, because we won. I guess that is the shot I wanted.”
Wings (25-2) felt vindicated after falling to Medgar Evers in this game last year. The Lady Wings will now meet Archbishop Molloy in the New York State Federation Class A semifinals Friday at the Times Union Center in Albany.
“We still got business to take care of in Albany,” Wings coach Juan Gonzalez said. “We’re going in with one vision and that’s to take that championship, too.”
Curtis (19-9) was actually in the driver’s seat after a 3-pointer by Dana Gildea put the Warriors up 39-33 with 6:57 left in the game. But Wings actually built off the incident in the stands. Hayes followed the Gildea trey with a 3-point play and Moses followed with a 3 that pulled the Lady Wings within 41-39 with 5:28 remaining. That started a 7-0 run capped by another Hayes basket, putting Wings ahead 43-41 with 3:41 to go.
“That was adversity,” Gonzalez said. “I tried to get them together to stay focused and that just pumped them up even more.”
Gildea tied the score with a runner in the lane at 1:45, but Karisa Crawford missed two free throws that would have put Curtis up with 29.7 seconds left. That set up Hayes’ shot, one that didn’t look pretty, but Gonzalez said he would have taken it any day of the week. At worst, the game would have went to overtime.
Hayes covered her eyes and began crying after the shot, much like Moses was moments earlier.
“I was sad, happy, everything,” she said. “I was shocked, because we definitely won. We just took it all.”
Moses didn’t find out until later that her grandfather was rushed to the hospital after the incident due to an anxiety attack brought upon by the brouhaha, sources told The Post. No arrests were made, police sources told The Post, and Moses’ family members were unharmed in the fight.
NYPD school safety agents broke things up, only for it to escalate again minutes later. Moses’ mother gave her a thumbs-up sign to signify that she could continue to play and put things out of her mind. Initially she had thought it was something involving her brother.
“I couldn’t hold it in,” Moses said of her tears. “I just had to let it all out.”
Hayes finished with 24 points, Ashley Goodlow had nine points and Moses added seven for Wings. Gildea and Ayo Adedapo both had 16 points for Curtis. The mission in November for Wings was to make the title game and win. The players and Gonzalez wanted nothing to do with the feeling they had last year.
“This means the world, man,” he said. “I was here last year and we lost. We were coming to get what was rightfully ours this year.”