January 15-19

The new week started as usual with morning lunch at the mall, overnight into Tuesday we had another round of the ugly white stuff. Schools were closed all over the area with athletic events a casualty as well, our Tuesday night game at Cedar Crest was postponed until Thursday, This set up a three-in-three for the boys with a home game on Friday and a neutral-court game at Reading High set for Saturday. One of the more popular forms of humor over the years has been the "good news/bad news" joke, the first two games of the gauntlet were a great example. On Thursday we traveled into Lebanon County for the game at Cedar Crest, we lost to them by fifteen on our floor back in December and there probably wasn't anybody who would have bet ten cents on our guys this time around. We were down by three at the quarter and one at halftime, entering the final period we had a two-point lead. CC rallied to lead by one in the closing seconds, with two seconds remaining Brian McKenzie hit a fifteen-foot jump shot to put us back ahead. Cedar Crest immediately called timeout and diagramed an inbounds plays which was successfully defended as the buzzer sounded. The stunning 55-54 win is JPM's third of the season (and only the third loss overall for CC) and for a young team that has taken its lumps it's a very rewarding victory to say the least. All of that was the "good news", the "bad news" came the next night at home. We hosted Lebanon and lost 70-63. We had beaten them in their gym in December so for a second straight night it was a case of tit-for-tat. Lebanon had two players combine to score fifty-two of their seventy points (32 and 20 respectively), JPM used ten players and everybody got into the scoring column. The club's mark stands at 3-13 overall and 3-6 within the league, the six losses have been by an average of 7.5 points. If we were being destroyed by thirty every night it would be much more discouraging but this team and these players have never given up. Within the league we have lost by fifteen to CC, by ten each to MT and Hempfield (those teams are the top three in the division) and by seven, two and one. The boys have five games left within the league and six overall, the next time I'm with them is Tuesday the 23rd in Millersville against Penn Manor. Take care, thanks for reading.