January 30-31

Had lunch with Jenny on Saturday morning, in the evening we were at Reading HS. This was our final non-league game of the regular season, it was the marque matchup of a three-game showcase event. Since we were playing the host team on their floor I figured in my own mind that one of two things would result: (a) we play a hell of a game and get hosed by the officiating or (b) we run into a buzzsaw. The latter scenario is the one that played out, we were down 7-0 in the first minute and never recovered. The final score was 103-51 (that is not a typo) and it would have been much worse had the mercy rule not kicked in at the start of the fourth quarter. You have to give the RHS basketball program its due, it's one of the top programs in the state year in and year out and on this night in their building they clearly had everything on their side. After the game our coaching staff enforced the idea that the feeling a team has when a loss is as lopsided as this is a feeling you don't ever want to have ever again. JPM's final non-league mark is 2-3, the overall record sits at 15-5 with one game remaining. That is on Tuesday the 2nd at home against Hempfield in what will be an important game both for league playoff and district tournament seeding. On Sunday I read the story of Saturday's game in the Reading newspaper, one of the RHS players was quoted as saying that they viewed the game as revenge for JPM costing them the district title in 2015. Somehow that logic escapes me and here is why: the teams met in the second round of districts, in that game there was an incident resulting in the suspension of one player from RHS and ten (count them, TEN) from McCaskey. RHS won the game and played in the semifinals with their entire roster available save for that one player, they lost and all everybody talked about was how "shorthanded" they were. JPM was forced to play its next game in the consolation round with no available substitutes, the five starters played the ENTIRE GAME, they lost and nobody talked about how legitimately shorthanded they had been. I have to admit that I don't get it, it seems somewhat myopic to me. I guess you could say it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Take care, thanks for reading.