January 7

Monday morning lunch at the mall, in the evening we were at McCaskey for what would prove to be a historic night of basketball. After losing their first two games the junior varsity squad has won seven in a row, the average margin of victory in the winning streak has been forty points. On this night it took overtime but the boys kept the streak alive with a 71-66 win over Cedar Crest. The varsity game was competitive in the early going, we were ahead by five at the quarter and upped the advantage to twenty-one at the half. A 33-16 third quarter put it away as the Red Tornado won it 99-48. Devonne Pinkard led all scorers with 28, Sha-ki Staten had 20, Diante Cherry 19 and Kyaire Bynum had ten in a reserve role. The highlight came early in the fourth quarter, Devonne's final point of the night was the one-thousandth point of his high school career. Devonne played at Lancaster Catholic in his freshman and sophomore years, he transferred to JPM for his junior season. His 336 points at LCHS count towards his overall total, he has scored 664 in a McCaskey uniform. He becomes the ninth player in school history to achieve the 1000-point plateau and the sixth in Coach Powell's tenure (Jerry Johnson in 2000, Perry Patterson in 2002, Dustin Salisbery in 2003, Leontae Turner in 2010 and Diante Cherry in 2012). The win keeps the club unbeaten in league play at 7-0 and 10-2 overall, like the JV the varsity has rebounded nicely from an 0-2 start. The boys play at Hempfield on Wednesday (never an easy assignment) and at Cocalico on Friday. Take care, thanks for reading.