Category Archives: Dell’s Column

Dell’s Column Dec. 17th

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Dec 17th column

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LLhoops.com coverage…
Normally I would recap some games that I have seen in this slot. However, since LLhoops.com has been posting via wraps or podcasts, I’ll skip the recaps as most can be found under Andy’s take and Dell’s column. Teams observed this weeks LL teams include: Spot, Penn Manor, Cocalico, Ephrata, Etown, Crest, McCaskey, Hempfield, LS, Lancaster Cath, and Donegal. Eleven out of the LL’s 24 teams is a great start. Our part-time photographer and web-master, Kirk N, is starting to get out to games as well. He gets credit for our newest pict. on the right side of all pages.

Dell’s take…so far
As stated in the twitter world, Section 1 appears to be a bitter struggle. Crest, Hempfield, and TWP all have zero losses at this point- that will change next week as teams will play against each other. I checked out PM multiple times due to keeping the scorebook – one can never take the place of a legend (Joe Herman)- for the Comets. PM has potential for disrupting teams on the defensive end. The Comets have speed galore (Kevin Roldan, 5”11” jn., Luis Tamayo, 5’7” jn, Anthony Rosario 5’9” jn.) They will need to develop consistent scoring in order to compete at the top level in Section 1. Off guard, Ty Erisman, 6’1” jn, wrote us this week on our poll- we can only put in 4 teams – and stated that PM should be there. As I tell everyone “that’s why we play” 🙂

Section 2
I like LS a lot, but I have not seen other Section 2 teams. Ryan Smith, 6’10” sn, put on a double display vs. Lancaster Cath. last week – something like 24 pts and 15 rebounds and 5 blocks. From afar, contenders seem to be Spot and Ephrata.

Section 3
Lancaster Cath. was checked out 3 times by this reporter last week. The Crusaders are very balanced, play hard, have some height, and, as always, are well coached. Coach Joe Klazas has over 240 wins in his pocket—that total will increase this season. Lancaster Mennonite is hanging around as usual. Surprise teams, maybe, are AC (a group of seniors that have played a LOT of varsity ball) and Northern Lebanon. The Vikes established themselves as legit with a big 60-55 win over AC last week.

We normally don’t get into other leagues in the District 3 area but….A very special congrats goes to Adam Freese, 6’3” sn, of Kennard Dale (@KDHoops717 @adamfreese13) on his 1000 point this week. I saw him in person vs. PM. Andy Herr mentioned him early and he did not disappoint as he tossed in 31 vs. the Comets. 1000 points is a great accomplishment for any players….not only that but his family gave us all sorts of new followers this week 🙂

Crest/York at the Wells Fargo Center….
Coach Smith got us a contact number for the game. Dell and long time helper/friend/confidant Mike Wildisin headed down the “express-way” on Friday. We left Lancaster at 11:15 and asked our on-star advisor for directions. We headed down Rt 41 when the on-star lady told us to take a right….well, finally we did thinking it would cut off time….that would be a “no” as we crawled along the “Surekill” at 15 mph. ..We got nestled in just in time for the 2:15 tip.

Check out Podcast for the game wrap, and Coach Smiths interview after the game.

I participated in 2 of these trips while coaching at Penn Manor. The games are exciting and stressful all at the same time. The game was played in front of about 300 people – scrimmage atmosphere – and at 2:15 in the afternoon on a huge, well –lit NBA court. Something always seems to go wrong (like the shot clock going off in the first possession). Both teams took awhile to crank up the level of play, but the game was close and came down the stretch. York High got to the rim late in the fourth, and Crest was not real good from the line, 6/17. Both coaches cleared the benches towards the end of the game giving all players a chance to play on the big floor.

Aside…went home a different way and ..well only a 3 ½ hr trip home- snow, ice, traffic, more snow (counted 6 cars in ditches on the way). No double headers for llhoops Friday night. J…AND we were watched by Cedars Crest elementary class, Mr Rohrbach’s class @ebenezerB118 on the whiteboard = priceless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LLhoops.com site-me
I try to get some feedback on what we are doing well or not…for example
“What to you think of the “podcasts” – “love it” “don’t do that stuff”  … guess one can never trust the twitter polls 🙂

We will keep the podcasts and see how it goes. I know new things take time. Andy Herr gave us a great wrap this week.

We figured out the standings section. I’ll sort them by LL wins….not percentages. In the end it will all work out.

Berksbeat opens…thanks Bruce B for expanding our coverage- great videos from Berks Co games and LL games. The plans, as of now, are to have Andy and Bruce double team an LL game on Friday. We will be sure to tweet our where abouts on game day.  @llhoops @andybrackets @BadgleyBruce..also our friend at @LancLebsports covers an LL game.

Neast Beat—welcome back Jon K. @LLHoopsNEPbeat After some growing pains, it seems like Jon k is up and running….COLORS will appear this week.

 

 

 

The week ahead…
Key games= All LL games 🙂

Monday Dec 18: Spot at Ephrata, ELCO at LMHS

Wed. Dec 20:
TWP at Hempfield, Donegal at Spot, Lanc. Cath at AC

Friday Dec. 22:
TWP @ Crest, LS @ Spot, Columbia at Lanc. Cath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LL Trivia
No answers to last weeks trivia? We can usually count on Nate G., @nateg0875 to take a stab at the answer: Perhaps folks can put a guess in the comments section on this post?

“LL trivia: Coach Joe Klazas has over 200 wins in the LL. Besides Coach Powell, McCaskey (over 400), what coach has the most LL victories with his CURRENT team?”

That would be Geoff Groff of Lancaster Mennonite: 2 stints totally 384 (not counting this year). On his second stint he leads all current LL coaches with 147 wins.

LL trivia: McCaskey has the most wins (785) since the LL started in 1972. Can you name the next TWO programs with the most W’s?

Thought of the week:
“Perfection is impossibility but striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can. That is what counts.” – John Wooden, UCLA

Funniest thing this week: I asked long time Warwick scorer, Tom Clausen, who I should concentrate on (like their best player) and he said watch #10. I watched the entire game #10 did not play. I checked the book and ….there is no #10 🙂

Twitter Quote of the week: from @HempStudSec18 and the winners of an LLhoops lanyard. Replying to a tweet saying Hempfield stunned Carlisle… “Stuns” is not the right word, if you guys knew what you were talking about you would have known we were gonna win

A big thanks to our twitter friends with scores. Will list some of our “go to” folks next column.

~dell jackson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dell’s column Dec. 10

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Column – Dec. 10th

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Tip off…Dec. 8th and 9th

Most teams got started this weekend. Big tourney wins by Donegal, Crest, TWP, Lancaster Cath., Spot and AC. Congrats to getting off to fantastic starts. Splits include Penn Manor, CV, LMHS, Northern Lebanon, Lebanon, Columbia, PV, Ephrata, and Etown.   Warwick championship game at Octorara was ppd due to weather as was Leb. Catholic’s first game. Make-up dates for these games TBD.

LLhoops was at Lancaster Catholic this weekend – subbing for the veteran scorekeeper Joe Herman on the score-book for Penn Manor. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that we use pencils on the score-book. Lots of scratch but the good thing is when calling in scores to LNP they using typed words. Lancaster Catholic’s admin. (Rich Hinnenkamp @LCHS1022) was great to work with, the crowd was awesome (@CrusaderCrazy), seeing old friends (Tony Arcudi (sp?) and our go-to guy for Lanc. Cath. scores – Micheal Rudy @Rudedogg23) and the teams played hard. I learned a new PIAA rule this weekend (the refs can give a warning to a coach for….???), and we saw it implemented as Penn Manor’s JV Coach Bill Southward (ex head coach of Lancaster Cath.) got a warning this weekend. In typical Bill-speak, “I’ve never been warned before” = priceless! I spent 10 minutes trying to find a math-adding mistake when dealing with the newspaper. Two sets of numbers added up but a third did not—quarters and players totals were right on…the foul totals were off. (Confession – appropriate as doing a Lancaster Catholic game- this score-keeper taught math for 36 years, did not use a calculator, and thinking too much common core and not enough adding in recent years!)

Lanc. Cath. … the Crusaders are coming off an historical year 2016-17 as they won Section 4,the LL, and District 3 titles. They practically lost their entire team…and as history reveals to us – the Crusaders reload. Joe Klazas has led Lancaster Cath for the last 12 years. He earned his 242nd win this weekend. LC beat down Spring Grove in the first game using a 19-1 run the second quarter to put the game away. LC pushed Spring Grove to the baseline and let its big back-line swat shots and contest anything inside. The back-line of Dwayne Caine (6’4” jn), RJ Van Tash (6’2” sn) and David Kamwanga (6’6” soph) would dominate both games over the weekend (69-31 over Spring Grove and 58-48 over Central York) Central York features a perimeter oriented , 3 ball shooting team. The Panthers got down early 19-6 after one and made a very late push but basically the Crusaders rode the emotional wave of the first quarter to claim the championship.

High scorers for the weekend:

vs Spring Grove Johnny Besecker (5’11” jn) 12, Dwayne Cain 11, RJ Van Tash 10

vs C. York David Kamwanga (6’6” soph) 14, Van Tash 14, Miles McCaskey( 5’10” sn )10

Pict by Alison Caine @AYoungCaine

Penn Manor split this weekend. Central York used a three point barrage in the first half (8 of them) and pretty much coasted to the win: 59-35.

The Comets earned a W in second game as PM held Spring Grove to 2 points in the 4th quarter turning a 33-32 deficit into a 42-35 win. Penn Manor pounded the off. glass to keep the game close. Alex Arias, 5’6” jn, provided a huge spark (7 pts all in the second half) as point guard Kevin Roldan, 5’9” jn, was in foul trouble. Spring Grove had a good look at a 3 ball late, but it was short. The Comets finished it out on the line. PM had no players hit double figures.

All with 7 points :

Ty Erisman, 6’ jn, Colin Morrison, 6’4” sn, , Alex Arias, Kevin Roldan

LLhoops.com…Misc.

  • Standings need to be sorted. We might or might not keep it that way.
  • Berks Beat coming soon.
  • Podcast? You like or not? We’ll put up survey on twitter soon.
  • Re-design—takes some time and adjustments on viewers and authors.
  • Andy Herr—starting his All LL hoops tour with wrap on Spot.
  • Scores: our followers help us so much getting the scores up quickly.
  • Links—needs to be added. I find myself looking for info from LNP and other places.
  • Double team? Andy and Bruce Badgley (Berks Beat) will be doing some work   together this year- some periscope and tweeting from the same game- capped off by Andy’s weekly wrap of the game.
  • Picts—we hope to have some game shots in the future
  • Comments sections- must be approved by LLhoops staff. Keep it clean and we’ll probably allow 🙂
  • periscope…excuse us if not real good- yet. Will try to do a clip or 2 each game we cover.
  • Rosters–check out the team pages. We have most. Need some tweaking.

Looking ahead ..

Some key match-ups this week. All games are big for the schools involved but here are a few that caught our eye. Follow @llhoops this week as we will tweet out which games our staff is attending.

Monday: Crest @ M Central, Chester @ McCaskey

Tuesday: Columbia @ Donegal, Lanc Cath @ LS

Wed: TWP @ CD

Thurs: LL openers for Warwick @ PM and Crest @ McCaskey

Friday: ALL LL play except for Crest vs York at Philly

Sat: McCaskey @ Harrisburg

 

Predictions…ok I’m cheating as we have had a weekend to evaluate. Bring on the Bulletin boards (do teams still have B Boards or blogs, twitter sites, huddle and instant gram protected sites? )!

Section 1…The big boys will be beating on each other all season long. Front-runners include Hempfield, TWP, Crest. Sleepers will be McCaskey and Lebanon.

Bulletin Board material: Crest, Hempfield, TWP,  Lebanon, McCaskey..

Section 2…A lot of talent coming back in this section..plus a lot lost.

Bulletin Board material: LS, Spot, Ephrata…sleepers Etown, Donegal

Section 3…LL History leads us to believe LMHS and Lancaster Cath. will battle for the title…Not a bad conclusion.

Bulletin Board material: Lanc. Cath, Columbia, LMHS…sleepers AC, NL, ELCO.

 

Looking way ahead

Thanks to Warwick AD, Ryan Landis, for providing us with the 2018-19 section breakdown.

Here it is…

 

Basically, the LL is getting ready for possible expansion of smaller class teams into the LL. The playoffs are to be determined. So… we will see the return of crossover games in Sec 1 and 2, Sec 3 and 4, and no crossovers for section 5. The re-alignment should help with power points for district placement. For example, Lancaster Cath. would now be playing higher power point teams and not playing 1A teams such as Lebanon Cath. The smaller teams would be playing a much more level playing field. The big boy schools (Section 1 and 2) are mostly 6A classification so would not be hurt too much by cross-over games. We believe there will be more movement in the LL in the future as far as adding teams.

LL play…

Opens for some Thursday..most teams will be opening Friday.

 

Thought of the week:

“You can’t undo the past… all you can do is face what’s ahead. It’s up to you to change. No one else” Jay Williams, ESPN @RealJayWilliams

 

LL trivia: Coach Joe Klazas has over 200 wins in the LL. Besides Coach Powell, McCaskey (over 400), what coach has the most LL victories with his CURRENT team?

 

Check out some High School hoops games this week!

You can contact us at webmaster@llhoops.com

~Dell Jackson