Monday morning arrived with dreary weather and another raft of changes to the basketball schedule. That evening's game at Penn Manor was switched to Wednesday the 17th, as a result the crossover game at Conestoga Valley on the 17th was rescheduled for Saturday the 27th. The league is attempting to get all the divisional games completed since they are the only games counting for playoff seeding, the maneuvering gave us an extra day before starting a crucial back-to-back divisional set. On Tuesday night we made our way north on route 72, after twenty-six days and four postponements we finally got that game played at Cedar Crest. This was a varsity-only event since the JV game was called complete when we were originally there in January. Although CC is not as strong as they've been in recent years a game in their building is never easy, on this night it was a battle through three periods before the Good Guys pulled away in the fourth. We were up by one at the half and five entering the last quarter, the final was 56-42. Jared Kumah led the effort with 13, Jonathan Byrd had 12, Hasan Williams added 11 and Sam Hershey scored 10. Javonzee Washington had six points, Jayon Burnside scored a field goal, Grady Bachman and Kevin Bell were each 1-2 at the foul line. On Wednesday we traveled southwest through the city to suburban Millersville for the twice-postponed game at Penn Manor. The JV squad started the night with a victory, in the varsity game JPM won 78-56 but it wasn't as easy as it sounds. PM entered with only one win but this was their Senior Night and they would have liked nothing more than to play spoiler. It was dead-even after one quarter, at halftime we were up by ten. We held that same advantage after three quarters, a 29-17 fourth quarter put the game away. Hasan Williams and Kevin Bell tied for game-high with 21 each, Sam Hershey had another big night with 17. Jonathan Byrd had eight, Grady Bachman scored five, Jyzel Mitchell added four points and Jared Kumah was 2-2 at the line. The two wins complete the club's divisional schedule at 6-2, the overall mark stands at 6-6. Hempfield is 5-2 within the division, they are scheduled to play at Cedar Crest on Friday the 19th. A Hempfield win would set up a playoff game for the title, a CC win would give JPM the championship outright. What remains for us are the five crossover games against the teams from Section Two which at this point are glorified non-league games and it's possible that some of them may not be played. At it stands we host Warwick on the 19th and Ephrata on the 20th, beyond that is anybody's guess. There was snow in the forecast for Thursday, it arrived early in the morning and effectively ended the day before it started. Take care, thanks for reading.
