February 9-10

The precipitation arrived late Monday night in the form of rain, sometime overnight it turned into a wet snow. By morning it was all over and our parking lot had been plowed, getting the cars out and cleaned was no problem. Jenny was in town, we saw each other over lunch. In the afternoon it was announced that the basketball game was postponed to Wednesday, that news effectively ended the day. On Wednesday we had our usual midweek lunch in Quarryville, some of the side roads were still wet in spots but on the whole driving was no issue. In the afternoon we convened at McCaskey for the rescheduled league semifinal playoff. The bus's destination was Penn Manor HS in Millersville, the opponent was Section II runner-up Conestoga Valley. JPM got off to a slow start, at the quarter we trailed by six but had the deficit down to three at halftime. In the third quarter we found our footing and took a two-point advantage into the final period. The Red Tornado started the quarter with a 13-0 run but CV refused to quit, they battled back to within six with a minute to go. That would be as close as they would get, strong JPM foul shooting salted away a tough 86-78 win. The teams combined for no less that twenty-two three-point goals, fourteen by JPM. Kobe Gantz led the way with 30 points (including five "threes"), Randolph Speller had 22 (five 3-balls) and Jathan Gonzalez posted a career-high 16 (four three-pointers). The win improves the record to 18-5 and puts us in the league title game on Thursday against another very familiar opponent. Cedar Crest finished second in our division and defeated Lampeter-Strasburg and Lancaster Mennonite to punch their ticket to the championship for a fourth consecutive season. We beat them for the title in 2013, they won it in '14 over Lebanon and in '15 against us. We beat them twice during the regular year but none of that means anything at this point, what happens in round three remains to be seen. Take care, thanks for reading.