December 11

Friday night hoops at JPM as the league portion of the schedule opened against Elizabethtown, this was the first of six crossover games with opponents from Section II. During the off-season it was announced that the league is realigning for the 2016-17 season. There will be three divisions instead of four with eight teams in each, as a result the crossover format will be abandoned. The league is actually returning to a system that existed from 1975 to 2004, we'll play our seven division-mates twice each (fourteen games) and gain two extra non-league games to round out the season schedule. On this night the JPM JV squad made its season debut with a 64-37 win, in the main event the Red Tornado prevailed 72-59. It was a much better game than many may have anticipated, E-town led by two at the quarter but at halftime we were up seven. In the third quarter JPM widened the margin and brought home the win, in many ways it was reminiscent of the Archbishop Wood game except that this time we came out on the good side. Two players hit double figures, Kobe Gantz had a huge night with 30 points and Randolph Speller added 13. Eight other players broke into the scoring column with single digits as Coach Powell got the entire roster into the game. Before the game began we honored Kobe for scoring his 1000th career point (it happened in March but this was our first home game since). It was Cancer Awareness Night league-wide, the teams wore light green t-shirts in the pregame warmup. A moment of silence was observed for cancer victims, we utilized it to honor Anthony Hunter's memory as well. The club is right back on the floor on Saturday night as they host Chester (never an easy assignment). Take care, thanks for reading.