Long Island girls basketball rivals battle for Nassau County title

They wouldn’t want it any other way.Two Nassau girls basketball rivals will duke it out at noon Saturday at Farmingdale State College in a true David vs.Goliath county championship.It’s the first title appearance for the fourth-seeded Plainview-Old Bethpage Hawks as they go up against the No.

2 seed, nearby rival and defending champion Syosset Braves.“That’s just a great game to say you won,” Hawks star guard and forward Emma Heaney told The Post of the upcoming contest.“It’s a respectable team, we’re a respectable team, and it’s just going to be a great championship,” added the Lafayette-bound senior, who will take the court for the Leopards next winter.Hawks 12th-year head coach Nick Tomasulo knows this opportunity has been a long time coming.“This program, when I took it over, was winning like two or three games a year,” he said.“Slowly but surely over the last four years, making the semifinals became a bit of the standard.But with Emma and the seniors, they raised that standard and can really make something special happen now.”The coach added that their 61-49 loss to Syosset in January became what the squad needed to finish the year strong.“It was after that loss that we vowed to each other, ‘This is it.

There should be no other losses.We should be celebrating at the end,’ ” he said of his team that won its final seven games to finish with a 17-5 record.“Now we’re here, and it’s exciting.”Settling the score with 19-3 Syosset will be no easy task, as Braves head coach Michael Ferreira intentionally scheduled several high-competition city schools throughout the season to up his players’ grit.“This team really wants to win,” he said.

“But we don’t talk about back-to-back a lot … this group just really wants to make their own unique history.”A little south in Plainview, they’re focusing on playing their own game rather than the sizable task at hand.“We’re just all chasing that feeling [of victory] an...