Falcons trip Spartans, remain tied atop Section 1 race with Manheim Township; Cedar Crest is in the hunt for its 3rd section championship in a row
JEFFREY REINHART jreinhart@LNPnews.com
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: Cedar Crest’s girls’ basketball team.
The two-time defending L-L League Section 1 champs got cleaned out by graduation last year, with four starters flying the Falcons’ coup.
Rebuilding season for Cedar Crest, right?
Nah.
Have you checked the Section 1 standings lately?
When Cedar Crest fended off pesky Garden Spot 53-33 and Manheim Township topped Elizabethtown 40-26 in L-L League Section 1-2 crossover games on Friday, that left the Falcons and the Blue Streaks tied atop the section heap with one more crossover game and five more head-to-head Section 1 games to go.
Cedar Crest and Township are both 9-1 in league games, and the Falcons improved to 12-3 overall after topping the Spartans in New Holland.
It was not the greatest game of basketball ever contested – Garden Spot turned the ball over 33 times and neither team shot the ball particularly well – but it was the Falcons’ second win in a row, and kept them on the 1-line with Township.
Two of Cedar Crest’s losses are to Mid-Penn powers: a 56-43 setback to Lower Dauphin after a 3-0 start, and a 55-33 loss to reigning PIAA Quad-A state champ Central Dauphin in the opening round of the Wilson Holiday Tournament. So neither of those loses are anything to sneeze about.
The Falcons won four games in a row after the loss to Central Dauphin before dropping a gut-wrenching, last-second 41-40 Section 1 game to Penn Manor last Friday.
Still, after snapping back to beat Section 2 leader Ephrata (57-38) on Tuesday, and taking care of business against Garden Spot, Cedar Crest is right there at the top of the charts – with four new starters and a couple of new top subs in tow.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
“We’re feeling pretty good at this point,” said Cedar Crest junior guard Meghan Phillips, who scored a game-high 19 points against Garden Spot. “We have a young team; we don’t have any seniors. So yeah, I guess you could sort of call this a growing kind of a year. But we’re still strong, even though we lost a lot of people from last year.”
Phillips is the lone returning starter, and she’s doing quite well, thank you. After turning her ankle in the season opener and missing the next two and a half games, she returned with a vengeance. Phillips is averaging 16.4 points per game, and she’s the Falcons’ unquestioned floor general.
“Phillips really stands out for them,” Garden Spot coach Kevin Gensemer said. “She’s a tough kid. I know we were throwing like three different defenders at her at a time just to try and mix it up.”
Phillips still managed to drop 19 on the Spartans – 8 in the second quarter, when the Falcons used a 12-5 run to grab a 22-11 lead at the half.
Taylor Boyer chipped in with 9 points for Cedar Crest, including a fourth-quarter 3-pointer to help the Falcons ice the game.
It did get a little dicey early in the third quarter, when Garden Spot’s Holli Styer finished off a three-point play and CeCe King – who scored a career-high 15 points Thursday in a non-league win over Pequea Valley – scored in the lane and the Spartans sliced the lead to 8.
But Cedar Crest responded, with new key contributors Jazmine Trimble and Kirsten Clemens getting two buckets apiece, as the Falcons closed the third on a quick 14-0 burst and led 39-18.
“We’ve been playing well as a group here the last couple of games,” Cedar Crest coach Gretchen Hall said. “Overall, we’ve been executing well the last couple of games, but we still have a lot to work on. … Our program has had a good thing going on here for a little while, so the kids come in every season expecting to do well. That’s the mentality they have. They’re not going to lower their expectations. They set their expectations where the kids before them had them.”
Cedar Crest won the Section 1 championship and made deep postseason runs the last two seasons. So this group, even with some fresh faces in some key spaces, has the same lofty goals.
“We always keep our goals high and we always have a positive outlook going into the season,” Phillips said. “We know we can it if we put our minds to it and play our hardest and play up to our potential. We know we can achieve our goals; that’s why we continue to set high goals.”
Cedar Crest’s No. 1 goal at the moment is to win its third Section 1 title in a row. The tricky part, with six league games to go, is not looking ahead or worrying about what everyone else is doing.
“As far as the standings … we’ll glance at those, but they’re bound to change,” Hall said. “You can’t even begin to try and figure that stuff out now. That would be ridiculous.”
Regardless of what happens Tuesday, when Cedar Crest is at Conestoga Valley and Township is at Ephrata, the standings will change next Friday, when the Blue Streaks host the Falcons.
Cedar Crest won the first meeting 52-46 on Dec. 23 in Lebanon.
“Township is a great team, and we know the next time we play them it’s at their court,” Phillips said. “But we’re worried about ourselves right now. We’re concentrating on where we need to get better.”
“Winning the section is goal No. 1,” Hall added. “But right now, we’re worried about ourselves. We can’t be worrying about someone else dropping a game somewhere else. We have to take it one game at a time, and try and win that game.”
The winner of next Friday’s game at Township will have a major leg-up in the race, which very well could go down to the last night.
NOTABLE: Garden Spot, already playing without standout senior Breana Caldwell, who tore her ACL on Opening Night, was without top defender Kait Defernelmont (strep throat) on Friday. Still, the Spartans hung in there. Cedar Crest had a seemingly safe double-digit lead midway through the fourth quarter, but when Hall put her backups in, the Falcons turned the ball over on six trips in a row, and she put some starters back in to help restore order. … Cedar Crest out-rebounded Garden Spot 30-27. … Cedar Crest had 16 turnovers. … No double-digit scorers for Garden Spot, but three players had 8 points apiece: King, Nadine Yunginger and Julia O’Brien. … The Spartans slipped to 3-7 in league games and to 5-11 overall, but Garden Spot is still alive in the wild Section 2 hunt. Ephrata (6-4) is still alone in first, despite dropping a 48-37 decision to Hempfield. And Solanco (5-5) is still alone in second, after falling to Penn Manor 86-83 in double-overtime Friday. Penn Manor’s Dani Busansky drilled a 35-foot 3-pointer at the horn to force the first OT. Solanco’s Taylor Kreider pumped in a league season-best 39 points in the loss. Garden Spot is just two games behind Solanco, and everyone has to play each other again head-to-head. So stay tuned.
