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Dell’s columnn- LL tournament, Districts, misc: Feb 18, 2018
 

Dell’s columnn- LL tournament, Districts, misc: Feb 18, 2018

Written by: Dell Jackson on February 18, 2018

 

Feb 18th

LL Championship wrap
LS took its first ever LL title over Lancaster Catholic. by a score of 50-40 at TWP last Friday. LLhoops had wall–to-wall coverage – photo gallery, tweets, video, interviews and write-ups. All can be found on the main page of LLhoops.com. Thanks to Andy Herr and Mark22 photos.

The Pioneers continue to improve their game – case in point LS handled Lancaster Catholics trap much better than they did Wed. vs. Hempfield. LS can go with 2 bigs (Ryan Smith, 6’10” sn. and Patrick Holmes, listed at 6’2” jn.- but he looks bigger than that to us:) or 4 guards around 1. Isaac Beers, 6’1” sn, had an outstanding tournament. (22 in the finals and another 22 pts. vs. Hempfield- 22’s wild). Smith, East Stroudsburg U bound, produces double-doubles every night. LLhoops had him at 12 boards and 4 blocked shots to go along with his 12 points in the title game.

As part of covering the LL, we got to be on the floor after the game. We talked with Coach Berryman and Ryan Smith after the game. Heck even the Pioneer fans wanted to get on llhoops’ soundcloud:)

Its always fun to see lots of smiles and pats on the back.

Kudos to the LL league in providing medals to both teams Friday. In the past medals were not given.

The tournament produced some highlights. Usually first round games can be lopsided, but this year most the games were very competitive: Spot/TWP, Lanc Cath/Spot, and LS/LMHS were all exciting and fun games to watch. The semis raised the bar to a new level as we had 2 games that came down to the wire. LCHS won the first game on a controversial call with .1 seconds left on the clock. Ephrata Coach Treese handled post-game well as he stated the Mounts had other opportunities to win and make plays. In the second game, LS ran out to a big lead only to see Hempfield close to 1 point in the fourth (the Knights had several down double-digit fourth quarter comebacks this season). LS survived Hempfield’s attempts to tie or to take the lead to advance to the title game.

Our much quoted, LLHistory, is now updated. This includes all the games from 1973 to 2018. McCaskey leads titles and appearances. LS cracks the ‘W’ column for its first time for a title. Lancaster Catholic has 22 LL appearances and 2 LL titles.

Pete Horn
Pete was recognized by the LL at halftime of the title game. I coached against Pete in the late 80’s. He was very competitive during the game and a class act after the game. According to out LL historian- Jerry Shenk, Pete coached McCaskey for 20 years with and overall record of 348-166. I snapped a picture of Pete and his old assistant, Steve Polunis (current AD at Hempfield) and posted on twitter. Congrats to Pete on as well deserved award.

Districts:
The LL teams schedule for districts is posted. There will be lots of playback games in some of the classes. Some teams got a bye (depending on the class and how many teams make it to the PIAA tournament (Lancaster Cath, Hempfield, and Cedar Crest all received byes) LS, which is a top seed, did not due to the field being at 16. Most of the first few round games are at the top seeded teams home floor. The scores are updated quickly and brackets updated the day after the games. The district site has improved a LOT. LLhoops used to post brackets but no need anymore.

The District 3 committee announced sites of games in advance. This could change but probably not. I like it because fans, media, coaches, and players know where the next game is- no waiting to hear from someone the next day or late that night. All finals will be played at Hershey Giant Center. The district folks will try to keep the championship games there next year, but in all likely hood, semis will be at other sites. This is due to contracts Hershey Entertainment gets with concerts and the rates the district must pay to Hershey.

The District playoffs are all based on power points- period.

Some interesting match-ups in the first round:
Lets start with ELCO @ NL. In a rare back-to-back, the Raiders will travel to N. Lebanon for a first round game. ELCO won the last game of the LL regular season and NL won earlier at NL. ELCO has a bunch of young guns (threes from above) and NL has veteran guard play—and with a Lebanon County rivalry at the ‘yellow” gym, ya’ know it will be quite the atmosphere 🙂

The second all-LL match up is CV at TWP. These teams split in the regular season- both winning at home. The winner of this games travels to Crest- the winner of that game will qualify for an LL berth. So…..the LL is guaranteed at least one team in the PIAA tournament. CV quietly goes about its business- the Monroe brothers (Austin 13 ppg and Logan 16 ppg) lead the Bucks. TWP is coming off a tough loss to Spot in the LL’s.

One interesting first round game, will feature hot-shooting Ephrata vs. Mid Penn team, Lower Dauphin. Andy Herr plans to be at this game so we will get some great information during and after this game.

LLhoops info
Main page issues…we updated and lost/gained some features. You will need to do some scrolling to find section teams. We will probably look for something new in the off season 🙂

Tweet tweet tweet…Friday’s LL title game produced multiple likes, re-tweets and follows. Thanks to all followers.

Some excellent photos by Mark22 photos are posted on LLhoops. Mark covered the girl’s LL championship game. We are looking for a girl’s staff writer. Please contact us via email – the pay ain’t great but ….:)

Feature Sponsor: John Lichty –CPA. It’s tax time. Give John a call. LLhoops has been a client since our first year in 2000. You will receive down to earth and individual attention from this company.

Jerry Shenk’s following of District 3 teams is outstanding.

Welcome Spooky Nook Basketball for joining our sponsors. We have produced a page for the Nook – applications for summer leagues- and will re-post about once a month or more.

Andy and I will be out and about this week. Bruce will continue with his coverage of the Berks league. There will be some travel issues later this/next week, but we’ll figure something out.

Congrats to all teams that made districts – cream rises. Expect some great games this week and next.

~Dell Jackson

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