February 15-16

Not much going on Wednesday, it was raining on Thursday morning as Jenny and I had lunch at the pizza parlor in Quarryville. In the evening we were in Landisville at Hempfield HS for the league semifinal game against Elizabethtown. E-town (like LS) won their division title and for most of the game it looked like it plain and simply was not going to be our night. In the first half E-town basically did whatever they wanted, we were down by ten at the break. In the third quarter the club showed signs of life chopping the deficit to two points. In the last quarter we finally took the lead with five minutes to go, down the stretch it was a knock-down drag-out fight to the finish. Regulation time ended tied at 80, in the OT we outscored E-town 15-7 to pull out a 95-87 victory. Nine players got into the game and eight scored, Devonne Pickard led with 23 as Brian Newsome added 19, Luis Fuentes had 18 and Diante Cherry scored 13. Diante's career total stands at 942 as he continues his climb towards 1000. This win puts JPM in the league title game on Saturday at Manheim Township and (surprise, surprise) it will indeed be a neutral-court game after all. We got word that MT lost to Lancaster Catholic in the other semifinal, after losing twice to them in the regular season I wouldn't have minded a shot at redemption but the fact that they lost in the semifinals has a rather delicious slice of irony to it. LCHS will not be an easy opponent, they won their division as well and they earned their opportunity just as JPM did so it should be a great game. This will mark the sixth time the schools have met for league honors, JPM won four of the previous five (the only LCHS win was in 2003 when they went 35-0 and won the state championship). It should be an interesting day for me given my association with Lancaster Catholic football, I'm sure I'll see a lot of familiar faces. Saturday will be a big day all the way around with the basketball game at 1:00 and the Royals at 7:00. Take care, thanks for reading.