January 13-15

Monday afternoon at McCaskey for the start of a busy basketball week, this was the makeup game in Millersville versus Penn Manor. The trip is one of the shorter we have within our division, the schools are only about six miles apart and after that little jaunt we had on Saturday this was a piece of cake by comparison. The JV squad won their game by sixteen points, the varsity followed suit with a 66-44 win. We were up nine at the quarter and eight at halftime, in the second half the boys opened it up and brought it home somewhat easily. Isaiah Thomas was top man on this night with 14 points, Elijah Terry added 13 and Makai Ortiz-Gray had 12. It was quite frankly a game we should have won and under the circumstances it could have been a trap game but the guys took care of business as a true contender should. The club was right back at it on Tuesday night at home, Cedar Crest visited from Lebanon County for arguably the biggest game of the season (at least thus far). CC is considered by many as the prohibitive favorite to win the division, they entered the night unbeaten in league play at 7-0 and 14-1 overall. The JV squad won its game by thirteen, in the varsity game the Red Tornado struggled early on. At the quarter we trailed by one but by halftime the boys were up by six, the advantage was at eleven entering the final period. CC (being the good team they are) never folded, they fought back to within five in the final moments. The obvious tactic at that point was to foul us to regain possession but the strategy boomeranged, JPM went 15-17 at the line in the last quarter to ice a closer-than-it-looks 62-48 victory. Elijah was top scorer with 20, he was supported by ten points each from Isaiah, Makai and Carter Gingerich. Samir Gordon scored six points with Jonathan Byrd, Da-vion Scarborough ('18-19 JV player) and Irving Gonzalez netting two points each. The two-game sweep improves JPM to 10-4 overall and 6-1 within league play, the boys have another back-to-back set on Friday and Saturday. Jenny and I did our midweek lunch date on Wednesday, after supper I took the scorebooks over to practise since I'm absent on Friday (but back in on Saturday weather permitting). Take care, thanks for reading.