Even On A Night With Fits And Starts, Lancaster Mennonite Proves Superior As Blazers Hold Down Lancaster Country Day To Continue Stellar Run Through Section Four
Written by: Andy Herr on January 14, 2025
Most years, the vast majority of the Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ basketball viewing audience isn’t really paying much collective attention to anything other than the Section One, perhaps even Section Two races, above all others from within the conference. In some respects, you can hardly fault the masses considering how the league’s top three winningest programs in terms of league titles collected currently call Section One their home residence these days. That’s all fine and dandy. But take a broader scope outward and expand your horizons just a bit, and you’ll quickly find that there’s far more talent than normal in those perceived to be “lower” sections this season.
To this point, if potential District 3 champions are more your fancy, then this year’s crop of squads hanging out in Section Four should do the trick.
Not to say that that big boys housed with 6A and 5A don’t hold anything more than a prayer in terms of winning a gold trophy on the Giant Center floor a month and a half from now, but obviously the road to ho is far more arduous, especially when save for Manheim Central and Octorara, who came into the week slotted at #2 and #4 in the 5A power rankings respectively, no other L-L team from within 4A to 6A sits any higher than a #7 seed in any of those three classifications collectively heading into the second half of the season.
Now, speaking of 1A and 3A however, classes where L-L Section Four teams make their bed, then that’s an altogether different story.
For the 1A portion, there’s obviously Lancaster Country Day.
“Obvious” in the sense that the Cougars are the lone L-L boys’ squad that lives the single-A lifestyle while punching above their weight class all year long in terms of their Section Four playmates. As a result, 7-5 overall record and all coming into the start of this week, the Cougars sat comfortably at the #3 line within the 1A crop with just a handful of weeks left in regular season competition. Within the section race itself, Country Day found themselves just on the outside cusp, still looking up at Annville-Cleona, as the Dutchmen held a one-game lead in terms of L-L Section Four’s #2 spot. A spot nothing if not important considering how the league awards two slots per section for the upcoming league tournament which will kick off next month.
The team sitting in the #1 spot in Section Four you ask? Well, the standings – and metrics – make it abundantly clear who that is.
In terms of divisional play, they came into Monday night boasting a perfect 5-0 mark. Overall, had it not been for all of just two seconds in a gut-punch loss at the final gun against Linville Hill in late December, they’d be unbeaten straight up. But for Lancaster Mennonite, a team that is right to have visions of winning far more than just a section title this year before calling it a day, that belief has been demonstrated by the way in which they’ve effectively run roughshod over all of their fellow Section Four brethren thus far.
If proof is what you seek, here’s a number for you—25.2. For that number is the average margin of victory in which the Lancaster Mennonite Blazers have prevailed against the likes of their fellow Section Four competition during the first go ‘round of conference play. For reference, that’s just two possessions away from triggering a running clock if this were a real game scenario. And that’s before we even touch on the other dismantling’s the Blazers have inflicted upon the 6A and 5A teams previously on their schedule too….
Needless to say, save for a baker’s dozen-point triumph that came at the hands of Lancaster Country Day in the first section game of the season back on December 11th, that margin of victory number then swells out a 29-point-per-game clip. In fact, that Blazers’ triumph against their fellow small-school Lancaster County rival remains one of the tightest victories that Mennonite has had to sweat through so far this season. And wouldn’t you know it, but on Monday night, the renewal of Mennonite and Country Day exchanging pleasantries with one another was on display once again. This time, the venue figured to be far more advantageous for the Cougars as the second meeting took place inside their friendly confines of “Parents’ Fieldhouse.”
However, even with a change in scenery, and even though it would be far from an instance of Lancaster Mennonite pitching with their fastball, Monday night’s eventual outcome mirrored a familiar theme that has enveloped the rest of Section Four so far this season—Lancaster Mennonite being able to win by a relatively healthy final margin once the buzzer sounds.
Unfortunately for the hosts, the evening could not have gotten off to a much rougher start than if the Blazers served in the role of scriptwriters themselves.
In that regard, after coming out of the gates sluggish as evidenced by Country Day turning it over on their first four offensive possessions without so much as a single shot attempt, Lancaster Mennonite proceeded to pour salt in their open wound.
For that, after a finish by way of Mennonite sophomore forward, Daulton Nolt, his second bucket contributed of the early action, the Blazers had acquired the 6-0 lead before a much-needed LCD deuce courtesy of Cougars’ junior guard, Jordan Ashby, broke the hosts’ scoring seal and made it a 6-2 affair with 4:47 remaining in the opening stanza.
From there however, Mennonite would build their advantage upwards to an eight-point count following a point-blank follow at the cup courtesy of wiry junior wing, Chase Hurst, made it a 10-2 ballgame with the Blazers enjoying their largest lead of the early evening.
But to their credit, even though the first eight minutes felt like nothing more than Mennonite seemingly exerting their will minute after minute, Country Day remained relatively unphased all things considered.
Case in point, a runaway bucket in transition chipped in by way of Country Day 5’11 sophomore guard, Chris Tucker, for a hoop that not just helped the Cougars close the gap back down to five at 13-8 with now inside of a minute left to go in the opening period, but it also came within a timely 9-3 final charge for the hosts over the course of the back half of the opening quarter that effectively sliced the Mennonite lead down to just a pair, 13-11, come the end of the quarter.
For a squad that seems to make a habit out of routinely scoring somewhere within the 60’s or 70’s in terms of total point production by the end of the night, this was a bit of a change of pace for the Blazers in both a literal and figurative sense. But if the offensive prowess wasn’t as lethal as perhaps it normally is, why not lean upon your defense to help bail you out? For the lone senior on the Mennonite roster, Jordan Lilly, he took that as a call to arms.
With the Mennonite still searching for some sort of offensive salvo that they could perhaps ride into the halftime locker room on Monday night, that never really came. However, if juice and a jolt was what the Blazers were seeking, their senior guard delivered that in spades by fearlessly taking a charge for his team, giving the ball back to his fellow troops with their lead standing at half a dozen, 17-11.
Then, with all the subtleness of a wrecking ball, Mennonite would indeed parlay the Lilly charge into that of tangible momentum for the remainder of the frame.
Specifically, the Blazers would see their cushion expand out to double figures at a 23-13 count following a sweet dime inside tossed from Brady Grau to a willing and able Bill Rothwein waiting underneath the cup as the Mennonite junior duo helped propel LMH out to their largest lead at the time with just three minutes left before the halftime break.
All told, while Mennonite would not only continue to keep their hosts at relatively arm’s length throughout the remainder of the quarter, the Blazers would then take an even larger lead –albeit by the slimmest of additional margins — into the recess as a Chase Hurst second-chance trifecta inside the final minute helped to ignite the Blazers’ troops come the start of the second half considering the 26-15 differential in their favor at the half.
Throughout the duration of the first 16 minutes, while perhaps not nearly as pronounced as it had been right out of the chute in respect to their outward four consecutive turnovers to begin the contest, turnovers were nonetheless clearly the bugaboo when it came to Lancaster Country Day being able to get any sort of entrenched footing on Monday night. Remarkably, considering the type of adversary they were going up against while fighting against this ill-timed bit of generosity, the homestanding Cougars most certainly had to be appreciate of their current situation all things considered once their naturally-gifted scorer, Jordan Ashby, was able to rise and fire in a critical trifecta which not only helped the junior end his evening as LCD’s game-high scorer in tossing in a 14-point effort, but it also made it a 34-22 game with just three minutes having been burned off the third quarter clock by that point once action resumed.
However, auspicious situation or not, that would prove to be all the closer Country Day would get for the remainder of the night.
Fittingly, seeing as how his selfless play helped to be the impetus for much of this damage which that had begun back in previous act, a runner in the lane tallied by Jordan Lilly seemed apropos as the senior’s bucket later made it a suddenly commanding 40-25 lead in favor of the visitors with now just two minutes left showing on the third quarter clock. Then, not long afterwards, following a second Brady Grau trifecta splashed in during the third quarter on Monday night, the Blazers sauntered into the final quarter with firm control given their 46-27 lead, thanks in no small part to their junior guard firing in those aforementioned 3-balls.
In the fourth, even when going up against the likes of a Lancaster Country Day outfit that has a high propensity for scoring in the same way you’d turn on a light switch, the final eight minutes inside Parents’ Fieldhouse were largely a matter of Lancaster Mennonite attending to a last bit of housekeeping.
In fact, the Blazers didn’t seem to have much of an appetite when it came for potentially slamming on the brake pedal considering how a Daulton Nolt and Bill Rothwein pair of buckets tallied back-to-back pushed the visitor’s lead out to it’s largest margin of the contest that was reflective in the 52-32 score with time quickly winding down on this final meeting this season between two potential serious players in the District 3 playoff landscape once they retire to their respective corners come postseason time.
And in those final moments, Jack Dirienzo found it to be more than ample time seeing as how the Blazers’ junior guard peppered in a trifecta of his own inside down the final stretch for the final bit of scoring on the night overall which would eventually see the curtain lower on a 57-39 Lancaster Mennonite victory over Lancaster Country Day inside L-L Section Four play to kick off the second leg of the conference journey.
Incredibly, while most will see an 18-point verdict in the Blazers’ favor and automatically assume this was nothing more than a case of same ol’, same ol, this was far from a vintage Lancaster Mennonite performance over the course of 32 minutes. Yes, while it was true that this was a game in which the Blazers never trailed at any point, the fact of the matter was that on this night, even when they might not have been hitting on all cylinders, Mennonite still essentially arrived at that same margin of victory against a Section Four squad as they’ve done on average this entire season. And when you consider that the historical beasts of the L-L League – Section One for example – is currently engaging in some version of a demolition derby with no team being able to get any sort of separation against the others, maybe this is a year in which someone can buck the age-old trend and prove that this is the year in which a Section Four team comes away with the league tournament crown after all. Given the current landscape of the conference while also juggling the resume that Lancaster Mennonite has been putting together night after night, it certainly wouldn’t be the craziest thing to envision. Or, if nothing else, it’s at least finally time to start giving Section Four the respect it rightly deserves.
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