With the game up for grabs, Michael Alvarado had the ball in his hands following a mad scramble. There’s no one else All Hallows coach John Carey would want with the basketball in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter and the Manhattan-bound senior guard made the perfect decision.
He passed the ball.
Smothered by a double-team near the foul line, Alvarado spotted Tevin Williams wide open in the low blocks. Williams scored the winning layup with 4.1 seconds left, lifting the Gaels to a 62-60 victory at Archbishop Molloy Tuesday afternoon.
“Coach always talks about trusting your teammates and I knew they were going to swarm Mike so all I had to do was stay under the basket and he’d give me the ball,” Williams said. “I just made it easy and finished it.”
Earlier in the year, Alvarado would have forced the shot, but part of his maturation has been practicing what Carey preaches.
“You’ve got to trust in your teammates,” Alvarado said.
Alvarado scored a game-high 21 points, but it was his late assist that had Carey beaming after the Gaels fifth straight victory.
“I’m just so blessed to be able to coach a kid like him,” Carey said. “It’s a pleasure to come in every day and deal with him. Not only is he a nice kid, but he’s a terrific player.”
With two fouls before the bonus, Carey informed his team to foul the Stanners in a non-shooting situation. That nearly backfired when Williams fouled Keith Kilpatrick, who put up a desperation shot with 0.1 second left.
“I went for the ball,” Williams said. “I didn’t know he was there. It was a miscalculation.”
Kilpatrick stepped to the foul line with a chance to force overtime, but he missed the first free throw and Ernest Rouse, who led Molloy (6-7, 2-3 CHSAA B/Q) with 18 points on 6-of-10 shooting from 3-point range, was called for a lane violation on the second attempt.
Kilpatrick nearly grabbed the clinching rebound after Alvarado missed a layup with the game tied at 60, but he lost control of the ball as he hit the floor, a missed call by the officials decried longtime Molloy coach Jack Curran.
“That last rebound Keith got knocked to the floor and they wouldn’t call it,” he said. “Very weak officiating. They let it get too physical.”
Chris Garcia had 14 points and five rebounds and Chris Dorgler added 13 points and nine boards for Molloy, which has lost three straight league games by a combined 11 points since a stunning 60-59 win against Christ the King on Jan. 8.
Geoff Tolentino scored 14 points and Omar Kellman added 13 for All Hallows (8-6, 2-4), which won just two of its previous eight games before its current five-game spurt.
“I’m very happy for the kids because we’ve gone through a little bit of a rough period from around Christmas and early in January,” Carey said. “We’ve got a couple of injuries, but it’s good for the kids, our fifth in a row and for them to accomplish that here, it’s a good win. It’s always tough to win here obviously.”
