Raiders’ Seniors Lead The Way As ELCO Comes Back From Halftime Hole, Keeps District Playoff Hopes Alive Following Rivalry Road Win At Northern Lebanon
Written by: Andy Herr on February 1, 2026
Admittedly, it’s not exactly the coziest or most desirable of places to find yourself with less than a week left in the regular season. No, not everyone this time of year can rest easily knowing that they have more games waiting to be played beyond what the regular season campaign allows. Instead, some teams will have to sweat it out while constantly hitting refresh on the District 3 Power Ranking page to see where exactly they stand at any one moment in time.
The ELCO Raiders would in fact be one of those squads coloring such a description.
It’s the largest field of teams that District 3 has to offer. 32 schools to be exact on the boys’ basketball 5A side of things. That then means that once it comes time to trim things down for the postseason, only 16 teams will be able to see their names called for making it into districts. Sure enough, the team sitting squarely there on the 16-line line coming into Saturday? You guessed it. ELCO.
And for a team that not only came into their nonleague affair with a fellow Lebanon county member in that of Northern Lebanon for a late Saturday afternoon tip in a game that had been postponed from earlier in the week due to snow, every game, every possession, will figure to be of the utmost importance for the Raiders from now until next Friday night’s finale against Palmyra, yet another team living an identical life to ELCO right now in hanging out around the 5A cutline.
Needless to say, when you’re 1-4 in your last five games, 10-8 overall, including coming off a tough loss at home less than 24 hours prior to your next tip as ELCO was on Saturday, there is no rest for the weary. There is no margin for error.
The good news though for ELCO? That’s a lesson that usually only senior leadership has a way of responding best to. And for a Raiders’ club loaded with precisely that, it at least provides them with a puncher’s chance, a fighting chance heading towards the finish line. Or, more succinctly put, the secret sauce that proved to be the difference on Saturday afternoon for the Raiders being able to get out of dodge unscathed in game that ELCO absolutely, positively needed to have.
As mentioned, had it not been for the seniors, especially early on against Northern Lebanon on Saturday, the Raiders likely would’ve found themselves in an extremely precarious position right out of the starting blocks in this must-win scenario. However, the good news for the ELCO contingent was that Austin Smith happened to suit up for them on this afternoon and provide a most positive lift for his fellow troops as the Raiders’ senior tallied the visitors’ first nine points all by his lonesome, helping to usher his side out to an early 9-2 lead throughout a large swath of the opening frame.
In fact, it would then require an old-fashioned three-point play finished off by yet another ELCO senior, Cole Doster, to find the first non-Austin Smith Raiders’ points of the day as Doster’s hoop plus the harm with the free throw added on top pushed things out to a 12-2 difference with 3:20 left in the first.
Yet for a team honoring their own seniors, two of them to be exact in Kael Erdman and Andrew Via respectively on this, their own Senior Day, Northern Lebanon figured to not go down without offering some sort of fight of their own. Instead, as ELCO soon learned first-hand, this was a Vikings’ squad that wasn’t the least bit interested in laying down and rolling over for their county rivals marking such an important occasion.
Speaking of Via, the Vikings’ eventual game-high scorer on the day who tossed in a 19-point showing, his 3-ball with inside of a minute left in the opening quarter had suddenly trimmed that prior 10-point bulge all the way to three, 14-11, before a Josiah Hayes bucket on the ensuing trip down for ELCO, yet another Raiders’ senior, helped to send their side into the second stanza with a 16-11 lead, albeit one that had to withstand a feisty NL charge over the latter half of the initial period.
But they wouldn’t be able to withstand this next Vikings’ rebuttal as it turned out.
No, and Carter Moyer’s triple on the very first NL offensive possession of the second quarter certainly didn’t help matters either as the Vikings’ sophomore, a 17-point scoring honoree in his own right on the day, helped trim the fat on ELCO’s lead down to the smallest it had been since the opening tap, 16-14, with the new period still well in its infancy.
Later, while a Via layup at the cup made things all square at 16-16, Northern Lebanon would encounter their first lead of the day while in the aftermath of a Ryan Clemmer steal and finish as the NL sophomore made it an 18-16 ballgame with 4:10 left in the first half.
That said, Northern Lebanon, Moyer in particular, was only then getting warmed up.
Specifically, Moyer would then rattle off his own personal 5-0 run to help the Vikings’ snowball continue to roll downhill, a burst that made it a 23-18 NL lead, with ELCO still being held to all of two points that point in the second stanza as 3:39 was still showing up on the clock.
Maybe it was the sense that this game – and their season at large – was starting to take on water. Whatever it was, had it not been for Austin Smith’s performance on Saturday, ELCO would’ve largely been lost at sea.
Aside from his game-high 22 points bucketed on the day, seven points clear of him creating a new season-high for himself, Smith’s points were anything but quiet considering the critical times in which they occurred on Saturday. Chief among them, a four-point flurry all his own to help close the book on the first half that helped the Raiders climb back within reach albeit while down at 25-23 heading into the locker room for the intermission.
Then, once coming out to begin the third quarter, the Raiders began to make their most significant move of the day.
Specifically, over the course of the first five minutes and change to begin the third frame, ELCO would best Northern Lebanon by 13-3 count, a key salvo that was punctuated by an Ellis Gensamer bunny from point-blank range, as the Raiders’ senior made it a 36-30 cushion with 2:40 left in a period that was largely dominated by the team hailing from Myerstown.
Then again, having to read Northern Lebanon their last rites was certainly not a chore for the faint of heart.
As if to be right on cue, Andrew Via would promptly come away with a tough take to the cup to trim the Raiders’ advantage in half, 38-35, before a near Raiders’ turnover on the final possession of the third quarter not only didn’t go in NL’s favor as far as coming away with the theft, but ended in a most heart-dropping fashion for their side to boot as Kaden Tillison, another Raiders’ critical senior piece, knocked down a deadly triple right before the horn to help vault ELCO into the final act with the 43-37 lead working on their behalf.
As far as the fourth quarter was concerned, it largely became a cat and mouse game played between these two long-time rivals.
Sure, while an Andrew Via three-point play would cut the gap down to five at 45-40, a Josiah Hayes bucket at the cup wouldn’t be far behind, two more en route to his 15-point afternoon, upping the ELCO difference back to nine at 49-40 with 5:30 left to play.
Again, even despite a Via steal and finish that would trim the lead down to five at 49-44 before yet another of Hayes’ vital hoops kept the margin at two possessions, 53-49, holding this latest Northern Lebanon rally at bay somewhat.
Ironically, for an afternoon that saw nothing but point production come by way of their senior class up until that point, it would be the lone underclassman, Queston Rivera, who might’ve made arguably the biggest bucket of the entire day.
There, with that same four-point window standing firm, it was a Rivera bucket from within the paint in and amongst traffic and a host of bodies inside which then made it a 55-49 ELCO lead with things starting to slowly slip away from a Northern Lebanon crew that might’ve also been running out of gas at the very same time.
And for the punctuation, exclamation mark as it were, that would fittingly come by way of the Raiders’ senior tandem found in Austin Smith and Kaden Tillison respectively as a Smith to Tillison bucket in transition helped put this on ice at 58-49 before the final count showed a critical 62-50 ELCO triumph over Northern Lebanon go final, a victory that the Raiders sorely needed in order to try and keep extending their season beyond what this next week has to offer.
Yet while most are entirely consumed by where their team resides down to the millisecond this time of year, ELCO’s head man is taking a different approach.
“Are we still in? I didn’t even look,” Raiders’ head coach Brad Conners admitted following his team’s 12-point win on Saturday afternoon away from home. “These guys, they’re always looking at that stuff,” Conners then said pointing to his loyal assistants. “Sometimes you get to the point where you don’t even want to know,” he joked. “For me, when you get to this stage in the season, I just want to see us start playing better, you know?”
“The kids all know,” Conners offered of his team being cognizant as to what their positioning looks like. “Like, down at Octorara the other night, they all knew about Donegal springing the upset (over Lancaster Catholic). It was the news of that Donegal upset that had us thinking, ‘Okay, maybe we’re still in the hunt (to make the league playoffs),’ before then finding out that the best-case scenario is a three-way tie and we’d still be out. When I found that news out where we’d be out no matter what, that was like a gut-punch,” Conners acknowledged. “I know I needed some time to collect myself and we had to play that night, last night… We called the kids early into the school and told them, ‘Hey, here’s the scenario. We’re out of leagues, but there’s still districts to play for, a lot to play for,’” the 16th-year coach of his alma mater explained. “We talk about it to explain that it’s all still out there, but we still have to play better.”
The positive in that regard? At least as the players would have to be concerned? The fact that this final week of the regular season sees the Raiders’ plate loaded almost exclusively with games as opposed to practices.
“I’ve been saying since like Wednesday that we still had a quarter of our season left to be played within these next ten days or whatever it was,” said Conners regarding his squad’s backlog of games packed in so tightly at tail end of the slate. “Three games in a week. It feels like we’ve played a lot of those. I’m ready to go back to the old Tuesday, Friday routine,” Conners joked of the days gone by that were heavy with league games primarily found on just those two weeknights alone. “But yeah. That’s a kid’s dream, right? Playing three nights in a row. I even told (his players), ‘If I’m a player, this is a dream.’ As a coach, it’s a nightmare,” he said in jest.
“We were hoping we could get two or three (wins) this week. We only got one, so now we have to get ready for Monday night (against Lancaster Catholic). Monday night’s a big one. It’s the next one. But they’re all big now because of the power points…We know what we’re up against,” Conners added in closing.
And while this might’ve been just one sprinkled into that critical last batch of contests, if Conners’ Raiders are able to take the lessons found in this hard-fought win against Northern Lebanon and apply them towards this final trio of tilts found against the likes of Lancaster Catholic, Blue Mountain, and Palmyra respectively, ELCO will at least give themselves that fighting chance. Because they did so successfully on Saturday, everything remains right there on the table for them.
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