February 5-6

Wednesday night at McCaskey for the last games of the regular season and what proved to be an unusual and memorable evening. This was the makeup date for the January 18 showcase event postponement at Reading High, Central Dauphin East visited from suburban Harrisburg. This was the second consecutive year the event in Reading was canceled, in 2019 we played the game as a makeup at CD East. This time around we hosted the game because (a) fair is fair and (b) nobody at JPM wanted any part of going back to CDE after the hosing we took there in 2019. On this night in Lancaster the JPM JV completed its season with a 49-40 win to finish at 17-5 (a rare case of a JV squad playing a full 22-game schedule), it was when the varsity teams took the floor that strange things began to happen. The fire alarms in the gym began to beep and flash, the fans were evacuated while the city fire department was summoned to investigate. The teams went into a side hallway adjacent to the gym to wait it out, Freddy asked me if I had ever seen an instance like this before and was surprised when I said yes (it happened at halftime of a JV game back around 2005 or '06). Once we got the all-clear the fans reentered and we picked up where we left off, the game was played without further incident (although the fire alarms continued to flicker for most of the first three quarters). The game itself turned into an instant classic, it required two overtime periods for the Red Tornado to prevail by the eye-catching score of 100-99. Through three quarters we played from behind more than with a lead, when the fire alarms finally stopped flashing it seemed like the lights went on for us. JPM rallied from a nine-point deficit with three minutes left to force OT, in the second OT JPM squeezed out a one-point advantage and picked up the win. Elijah Terry had a monster night with 41 points (including twelve in the combined OTs), Makai Ortiz-Gray added 20, Isaiah Thomas scored 17 and Samir Gordon had 14. Jonathan Byrd had seven key points and Da-vion Scarborough was 1-2 at the line. The team finishes at 15-7 (a four-game improvement from 2019), the next order of business is the program's first postseason game since 2016. League playoffs begin on Monday the 10th with a trip to Rossmere and a date with Lancaster Catholic (sure to be a deja vu moment for several of our coaches who have LCHS heritage). Take care, thanks for reading.