Orange Wave hello to Garden

  Jefferson’s Thaddeus Hall is a talker. He talks to his opponents, to his teammates. He smiles, gesticulates. He’s not bashful on the basketball court.But with his team down a point in the waning seconds of the PSAL Class AA semifinal against Wings on Saturday, Hall managed to back up his talking with a pair of clutch baskets that propelled top-seeded Jefferson to a 72-68 win over No. 4 Wings that should etch his name in postseason lore.“That’s what big-time players do,” said Jefferson coach Lawrence Pollard. “I felt confident with the ball in his hands.”With Wings leading 68-67 and 18.9 seconds left, Hall, a 6-5 lefty shooting guard, sliced into the lane with Wings’ Justin Jenkins tightly guarding him and muscled up a layup while getting fouled. The bucket gave his team a 69-68 lead. Hall’s free throw with 7.7 seconds left made it a two-point game. Wings had a chance to even the score or even win it but lost possession of the ball on the inbounds play when the ball was deflected by Jefferson’s Jaquan Lynch into the hands of Hall who sprinted in for a wild one-handed dunk as time expired, setting off a celebration that had Pollard vault off the bench as if he bounced off a trampoline.Hall finished with 22 points and won a mesmerizing one-on-one second-half matchup with Jenkins, who ended up with a game-high 23 points, 19 in the first half against constant double teams and nearly willed his team to victory.“It just feels really good to finally get to the Garden,” said Hall, who scored his team’s final five points and helped the Orange Wave make the program’s first ‘AA’ title game. “I kind of made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let us lose. I was able to make the plays to get us over the top.”Jefferson (25-6) trailed by four, 68-64 with 1:04 to play after Jenkins hit a double clutch runner in the lane and Jaequan Brown hit one of two free throws. But Jefferson refused to go away, and it was unlikely player with big-shot experience who helped the Orange Wave mount a comeback. With 50.7 seconds left, Nazai Stokes buried a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 68-67.“He’s hit some big shots for us before so I wasn’t surprised that he hit that shot in that situation,” said Jefferson’s Lynch, who finished with 16 and dished out several assists.Brown hit a difficult runner in the lane with 37.8 seconds left that would have given Wings (25-4) a 70-67 lead, but he was whistled for a controversial offensive charge, drawing the ire of Wings coach Billy Turnage, who was in his third straight semifinal, desperate to make the title game.“That’s a horrendous call,” Turnage said. “The referees aren’t the ones who should decide the outcome of a game.”As it was, Hall was the one who took matters into his own hands, literally.

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