Half Hollow Hills East East seeking LI championship redemption after last years heartbreak

The clock is ticking for this team. Half Hollow Hills East is looking to rewrite history in the Long Island boys AAA basketball championship against Port Washington on Sunday after being eliminated by buzzer-beaters — one in last year’s LI title game at Farmingdale State College — in each of the past two seasons. “When we go in [to Farmingdale], the wound just opens up again,” senior center Jordan Cador told The Post after beating William Floyd, 57-40, to win back-to-back Suffolk County titles last weekend. “It was a really close game around the half.We got the flashbacks of what could have been and we started to pull away after that, motivated by what we didn’t want to happen again.” Two seasons ago, a first-round game against Floyd began an extremely frustrating trend when the Red Hawks lost on a last-second shot, 57-55.

Last year, after HHH won Suffolk County over Smithtown West, 43-40, a mighty Elmont squad did the same and won the LI championship, 53-51. “We cut no corners, we wanted to be prepared this year,” coach Mike Marcelin said of his 20-3 squad, whose season truly began a day after losing to Elmont last March. “We’ve been putting in the work [in the] offseason — the guys have been in the gym nonstop.They matured their game on and off the court.

We’ve developed, and I think we’re just growing as a team.” The Red Hawks started with several summer leagues and camps, according to Marcelin, who then intentionally scheduled brutally tough out-of-conference matchups to test his team’s grit. They battled Long Island Lutheran — where Carmelo Anthony’s son, Kiyan, stands out — and Eagle Academy II of Brooklyn, and fell to another buzzer-beater against DeWitt Clinton in The Bronx.Nevertheless, their only three losses, which Marcelin called an important dish of “humble pie,” led to double-digit victories in all of the Red Hawks’ playoff games. Facing a higher level of competition isn’t all that’s changed...