Half Hollow Hills boys basketball advances to Suffolk AAA final after comfortable win over Smithtown East
Half Hollow Hills East's Sunjay Sharma puts one up in the third quarter during a Suffolk Class AAA boys basketball semifinal against Smithtown East on Tuesday at Longwood. Credit: Bob Sorensen
Half Hollow Hills East is back on Suffolk boys basketball’s biggest stage, and it used an imposing defensive effort to get there.
The top-seeded RedHawks held No. 4 Smithtown East scoreless for the final 7:45 of the second quarter to take a 13-point halftime lead, and they remained in firm control throughout the second half in a 66-38 win in the Suffolk Class AAA semifinals Tuesday night at Longwood High School in Middle Island.
Hills East (19-3), the 2024 Suffolk Class AA champion, allowed less than 40 points for the third time this season.
Senior forward Sunjay Sharma had 21 points, junior guard Skyler Ellis had 15 and junior forward Adrian Merchant had 10 to pace Hills East. Senior guard Brandon Varlack added 12 rebounds, five assists and four steals.
“It’s one of our main goals, and we’re finally here,” Sharma said. “We’ve been looking forward to this all season, and we got the right guys to do it.”
The RedHawks will face No. 3 Floyd (19-3), which they defeated, 68-55, earlier in the season, in the Suffolk AAA final at 6 p.m. Sunday at Farmingdale State.
“We had a message of just little goals, little steps,” coach Mike Marcelin said. “We wanted to, at first, obviously take care of home court. We wanted to get a home playoff game, and we wanted to win each playoff game by round and get back to the county championship. But we knew it wasn’t going to be easy, so we didn’t want to start thinking [about] that finish line before we even started.
“But in the back of our head, we knew we had the capability to do it if we played our game, and we’re here.”
Smithtown East (18-4) led 11-10 after one quarter, and Craig O’Neill (19 points) made a layup to make it 13-10 14 seconds into the second quarter. But Hills East ended the first half on a 16-0 run to take a 26-13 halftime lead.
“Just hustling, just playing hard,” Ellis said of the defensive effort. “We play like that all the time. That’s just our nature. That’s just who we are. So we just got to keep implementing that as we move further on in the rounds.”
O’Neill hit a three to cut the Bulls’ deficit to 44-32 with 6:07 left, but Hills East ended the game on a 22-6 stretch.
Hills East’s only losses are to Long Island Lutheran, ranked third nationally, and two non-Long Island schools: Eagle Academy II (Brooklyn) and DeWitt Clinton (the Bronx). The RedHawks have something clear to prove.
Said Sharma: “We want to show everybody we’re the best team on Long Island.”
Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
