February 22-24

The Saturday snowfall melted down a great deal on Sunday thanks to brilliant sunshine and daytime temperatures in the high 30s. Had my car at the service center on Monday for a long-overdue grease and oil change, after lunch I saw Jenny briefly since she was in town on business. On Tuesday afternoon we boarded the bus at McCaskey, the destination was the Milton Hershey School just outside the town limits of the place they call Chocolatetown USA. This was my first time ever in their gym, it's an above-average facility better than what some small colleges might have. On this night we met Harrisburg in a district playback game, the winner would play on Thursday for fifth place and the loser for seventh. Harrisburg is traditionally one of the district's top programs, they came in at 18-8 (not a bad mark at all but for them it's considered an off-year). The big story was the situation with JPM in the aftermath of Saturday's game. Efforts to add reinforcements were unsuccessful (for various reasons) so on this night the Red Tornado went to battle with no available substitutes. In January we played an opponent that never substituted until the final seconds (and that was only because one of their men fouled out), that occurred because their coach elected to go in that direction but it happened with us on this night only because Coach Powell had no other choice. JPM's Iron Five consisted of the group which for the most part has been the starting unit: Kobe Gantz, Randolph Speller, La'Detrius Sibley, Tyler Owens and Kyaire Bynum. They more than held their own through the first half, at the break we were ahead 28-22. In the third quarter Harrisburg was able to forge a lead of their own, down the stretch they were able to pull away and prevail 60-48. After the game nobody wanted to use fatigue as an excuse, most of the guys thought it was more a matter of missed opportunities. Had we had a full bench (or at least two or three extra men) the outcome could very well have been very different. The loss drops our mark to 20-9 and sets up a date with Central York on the 26th. It will be interesting to see where that game takes place, thus far the district committee has done us few favors. We were the tournament's #4 seed but in the second round we played #5 in the shadow of their home city, on this night we played a Dauphin County school (and the #8 seed) within the boundaries of Dauphin County. I guess sometimes the concept of "neutral" is open to debate. Take care, thanks for reading.