MIDDLE VILLAGE, NY – Christ the King Regional H.S. was the host site for Thursday’s Class “AA” Brooklyn/Queens Sectional Semi-finals. For Christ the King Royals, they were finally fully loaded with the long-anticipated return of 6’11” Mousa Cisse ’21 back from injury and were hoping to get back on track after a less than stellar regular season without him.

The Xaverian Clippers have been on a path to greatness this season and were confident that their strategy would prevail even with the Royals addition of the highly coveted sophomore. “Our coaches’ strategy was to box out and to get [Cisse] into foul trouble early,” said 6’8” Michael Graham ’19 who was mostly tasked with guarding Cisse.

Picking up four fouls throughout the game, while effective when he was on the court, as predicted the sophomore spent a lot of time riding the bench with foul trouble. That gave Xaverian the edge they needed to pull off a 59 – 57 victory. “We knew with him out the game we could definitely win,” Graham said.

After a short feeling out process, both teams went at it. 6’4” Nate Curry '19 was an effective midrange scorer for CTK while 6’2” Ryan Myers ‘20 lit the sky with a three-ball. Xaverian answered the call as 5’11” Shawn Fulcher ‘21 got open and created his own shot.

Cisse entered the game at about the 3-minute mark of the open quarter and immediately had an impact with a thunderous alley-oop dunk to the crowd’s delight. Graham and came to play and did his best to cover the big man.

Down by three in the second quarter, the Royals crept back in the game and gave as good as they got. Christ the King came at Xaverian with the mindset of getting the ball to the post. “[We can get] anything we want in the post. We gotta go back to it and back to it," barked Royals head coach Joe Arbitello to his players during a huddle.

Tied once again at 31 midway through the quarter, Xaverian got midrange shots from 6’1” Zachery Hayn ‘19 and point guard 5’11” Nicholas Folk ‘21 who ran the show. Myers countered while Cisse blocked shots and rim rumbled the ball. Thorough it all, Xaverian still maintained its advantage.

Still ahead by three points, Graham put forth slam dunks along with buckets by 6’1” Isaiah Amazon ‘19 and pushed the point spread to eight-points with 3-minutes left in regulation. 6'2" Lovel Smith '20 and Cisse tried to close gap but there just wasn’t enough time.

Amazon was high man with 12 points with Graham adding 10. Cisse led Christ the King with 19 points

Bishop Loughlin Avenges Loss to Holy Cross

The unranked Holy Cross Knights ended their season with an improbable 1-point win against the #3 ranked Bishop Loughlin. With only one other league win the entire season, the Knights beat St. Francis Prep a in the quarterfinals only to face the Loughlin Lions in a re-do.

Rarely does a team beat the same team two times in a row, especially when that team on paper should have won the first game. In this game, however, the statistic held true as Bishop Loughlin beat up Holy Cross, 65 – 47 to redeem themselves.

Jumping out the box with a 22 – 4 run, Loughlin was clearly not overlooking Holy Cross this time as the twins 6’6” Justin Champagnie ‘19 and 6’6” Julian Champagnie ‘19 wreaked havoc on the Knights whose deficit hovered around 20 points in the fourth quarter when Holy Cross attempted a run.

After trailing 48 – 28 in the fourth quarter, the Knights surged led by 6’0” Tyler Chapman ‘21 and buckets from 6’4” Aaron Worley ‘19 helped pull Holy Cross to within 8 points of taking the lead but the Lions had other ideas and held the ball until they were fouled to wear out time on the clock. The primary foul shooter down the stretch was 5’6” Maurice Doby 20 who was pure from the charity strip, sealing the win.

Julian & Justin Champagnie led the Lions with 25 points and 19 points respectively. Chapman paced Holy Cross with 16 points.