In November, there weren’t many expectations at Midwood, a girls basketball powerhouse in the PSAL for nearly a decade. The Hornets had an inexperienced roster and a new head coach.
Saturday the season ended, but it had a feeling of “to be continued” attached to it. The young roster gave second-seeded South Shore all it could handle before wilting late in a hard-fought, 62-41 loss at Hunter College in the PSAL Class AA quarterfinals.
“They performed for me today,” first-year coach Mike Moore said. “I’m happy with our effort today.”
Midwood, the 10th seed, actually led, 27-25, at halftime, a victory in itself, Moore said. The Hornets were within nine after three quarters before South Shore’s plethora of guards and versatile fowards took over. Fannisha Price, Jasmine Odom and Tatiana Wilson all had 15 points, taking turns burying the Hornets as the game got away.
When Midwood left the locker room, however, it did so with its heads held high. As they dressed, Moore spoke like a proud father, talking about how far his players have come in such a short time, extending the Hornets’ streak of 10 straight quarterfinal berths.
“I’m dealing with a young team, a very inexperienced team, and they played their hearts out,” Moore said. “That exceeded my expectations. They could’ve from the beginning just fell apart, but they chose not to. They gave me 16 good minutes. I know a game is 32 minutes, but I’m content with that.”
He was heartbroken that the run ended on Saturday, that he wouldn’t be seeing his players at practice on Sunday or have to prepare for a game next week.
“They gave me alI I could’ve asked, a great bunch of kids, I didn’t have one set of issues with them,” Moore said. “It’s tough that it’s over.”
Clearly, longtime coach Artie LeGreca left the program in capable hands when he moved into the athletic director role. During the regular season, South Shore won a pair of meetings by a combined 56 points. Yet Moore got the Hornets (11-14) playing their best ball at the right time. They upset No. 7 Lincoln, 41-37, on Wednesday, rallying from a 17-point, third-quarter deficit and had the loaded Vikings on their heels for the better part of three quarters on Saturday.
“You could see they looked over some tape, they looked over some film and they played well today,” South Shore coach Anwar Gladden said.
Though Midwood does lose sharpshooter Francess Henry, it has a pair of promising prospects to build around in 5-foot-9 sophomore wing Monet Keane Dawes and 5-foot-10 freshman forward Amina Markovic in addition to junior guard Kerslyn Fenelus. Keane Dawes scored a team-high 14 points against South Shore and Markovic showed a soft touch from the outside. Additionally, sophomore Medgar Evers transfer Camera Miley, a high-scoring guard, will be eligible.
Henry smiled when she was asked what she expects to see out of Midwood in the coming years.
“They have a bright future,” he said. “We just started over and we got this far. They’ll be good next year.”
Moore added: “Nobody gave us an opportunity, there were a lot of stories we weren’t gonna win any games. We had a pretty successful season, we had a great game, a statement game on Wednesday when we had to come back from a large deficit. I think we’re in the proccess of rebuilding. We’re on our way.”