After Shaking Out Of Early Doldrums, Warwick Comes Alive In Second Half, Holds Off Hard-Charging Garden Spot As Warriors Remain Unblemished In Section Two Play
Written by: Andy Herr on January 9, 2025
Coming into the season, if we would have assumed that this would’ve been the matchup of all matchups that could potentially decide the eventual fate of Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ basketball Section Two play as it relates to the 2024-25 season, it certainly didn’t seem all that farfetched of a notion.
To their credit, the Warwick Warriors in particular have certainly held up their end of the bargain thus far.
Coming into their Wednesday night affair on the road, Warwick had successfully continued to play the role of bully, villain, insert any adjective of choice here, as the Warriors came into the night as the division’s lone undefeated squad, a streak that came punctuated in a fairly decisive 53-36 triumph against their next closest competitor in the mid-year race, Ephrata, their last time out. To be sure, while the back half of the section slate still awaits, this is yet again shaping up to be a year in which any eventual argument when it comes to coercing and coaxing Warwick off their top spot in Section Two will have to be taken up with the Warriors directly if they happen to engage. And if the past is to serve as any possible indicator, that doesn’t figure to be all that fruitful of a discussion considering that Warwick has won at least a share of the division crown in three out of the last four seasons.
Awaiting them on the other side was what at the beginning of the year seemed to potentially be the Warriors’ stiffest competition along the way.
Granted, while the Garden Spot Spartans may not have arrived to their home confines on Wednesday for their first crack at Warwick with their overall record likely where they hoped it to be standing come the first full week of January, the gang from New Holland did however come in playing without question their best ball of the campaign.
Granted, while the Spartans’ 6-6 mark and 2-3 section record may not have caught the attention of most, surely their most recent string of three consecutive victories did considering how Spot had just vanquished the likes of Susquehannock, Solanco, and Lebanon all in successive fashion heading into this game against Warwick. And yes, while Garden Spot may come up on the short end of the proverbial stick half a dozen times thus far, there’s more to it than that. Consider this, within their six setbacks, only two of those came by some form of double digits. To be sure, if you want to take Garden Spot lightly, feel free to do so, but understand the ramifications that come along with it.
And for a team still searching for that first signature win right around the halfway point of their season, what better way to make a statement than to send their guests back home on a bus ride while marinating in what would be their first loss inside the section this season? To their credit, that’s nearly what happened once the clock hit zeroes on Wednesday night.
But it didn’t seem that way. At least throughout the Warriors’ first few offensive possessions most of all.
There, after seeing Garden Spot revert to their standard 2-3 zone which would’ve seemed to have made Warwick salivate at the opportunity to work against it, the Warriors indeed looked right at home considering their 7-1 cushion just 1:25 into the contest once Warwick 6’2 senior forward, Caleb McCamant, put the finishing touches on a personal 5-0 outburst to help set the table early on.
However, Garden Spot would proceed to show everyone as to why this was – and is – a team that can still inflict a considerable amount of damage yet this season.
Sure enough, while coming on the heels of a pair of bunnies at the cup tallied by way of Ryder Hertzler and Owen Usner respectively, the Spartans had clawed back to within a pair before a dead-on triple sunk by Garden Spot senior guard, Jeff St. Jean, awarded the hosts their first lead of the evening while riding the high of a 7-0 rebuttal before a timely Parker Horst finish at the tin on the Warriors’ ensuing offensive trip seemed to calm the waters somewhat with a tick over three minutes left to be played in a suddenly back-and-forth opening frame.
From there, while a pair of St. Jean freebies at the stripe would later knot things back up at 11-apiece roughly two minutes later, another Spot 3-ball, this one sprayed in by way of sophomore wing, MJ Davis, made it a 16-13 Spartans’ cushion which is where the margin of separation would remain at the end of the first eight minutes as Garden Spot had successfully flipped the early script and marched into the second quarter with ownership of the 18-15 advantage.
And right from right out the chute once the second act got underway, Garden Spot continued to acquit themselves quite nicely while going against one of the teams that has a foremost argument at being considered the best in the entire conference.
Case in point, with their 2-3 zone now suddenly seeming to keep Warwick puzzled and all out of sorts considering the high degree of difficulty shots the Warriors were seen firing up against it, Garden Spot did the mature thing and made Warwick pay for their generosity if you will. Sure enough, following another pair of Spartans’ triples splashed in courtesy of Davis and Sam Plaza respectively, Garden Spot possessed a 24-17 lead up on the scoreboard with 4:10 left to play in the opening half.
Understandably, if Warwick didn’t get themselves into a bit a groove and stop the early bleeding, this could’ve easily gotten away from them. And quickly too. Finally, for what their side had to ascertain, the Warriors would indeed settle back down.
Certainly helps of course if have a certified “dude” the likes of Ya’Majesty Washington that is. And with that in mind, seeing the Warwick 6’4 junior wing finish off a bucket at the cup while in transition which cut the Spot lead down to the slimmest of margins, 24-23, had to make the Lititz contingent feel slightly better considering how the Spartans were without much debate the ones taking the fight to their opposition.
All told, while it was an opening sixteen minutes in which Garden Spot had clearly asserted themselves as being up for this duel, perhaps the most remarkable feat contained within it was that while the Spartans had laid claim to a 27-23 lead at the break, none of those near-30 points were tallied by their leading scorer on the season and one the best players in the L-L League altogether, Jace Conrad.
In the third however, Garden Spot’s physical 6’2 senior guard made up for lost time.
Ironically enough, Conrad didn’t wait long to join the second half party seeing as one of his smooth turnaround jumpers not just gave the Spartans’ stellar senior his first points of the evening, but it also bumped the hosts’ lead back up to five, 31-26, considering it came on the heels of a Brody Clausen trifecta knocked down for Warwick on the possession previous.
Gradually though, while Warwick may have looked flummoxed at seeing Garden Spot rolling out their zone against them throughout much of the first half on Wednesday night, the Warriors seemed to have the antidote for it come the third quarter.
In fact, while Clausen, a towering 6’5 junior sniper for the Warriors’ contingent knocked down yet another triple not long afterwards that made things all square at 33-33, a subsequent Parker Horst floater in the lane made it a 35-33 Warwick advantage their next trip down.
And as fate would have it, while things would indeed get hairy yet coming down the final stretch, that Horst-generated deuce would prove to create a lead of which Warwick would never relinquish from there on out.
Yet it didn’t seem as if things would get all that precarious from Warwick’s perspective as the latter half of the third quarter laid to bare. Truthfully, it ended up being their most impressive snapshot contained within the night overall.
Specifically speaking, the latest in Brody Clausen’s aforementioned 3-ball antics helped to pave the way for what would be Warwick closing the books on the third quarter by way of a 14-2 onslaught as a Caleb Johnsen and Caleb McCamant bucket at the hoop in the waning stages not only gave the visitors their largest lead of the evening, 44-35, but it also helped serve as the jet fuel for the Warriors sauntering into the final period with the eventual 46-38 lead to their benefit.
But as Warwick quickly found out, putting away this Garden Spot crew would prove to nothing short of hard-earned chore the later the game got.
That eight-point bulge the Warriors enjoyed heading into the quarter? Well, that was effectively sliced in half in the aftermath of a pair of Owen Usner and Jace Conrad deuces respectively, with Conrad’s latest turnaround J, while en route to his 15-point second half outing no less, made it a 54-50 affair with inside of four minutes left to transpire.
From there, while the Spartans would then get to within three at 56-53 following an AJ Hurst trifecta, an old-fashioned three-point play on the rebuttal by the game-high scorer, Ya’Majesty Washington, upped the Warwick lead back to four at 59-55 with now 2:15 left to tick off the clock as Washington poured in two more for his eventual total of 18 points once the night concluded. That said, once Conrad would get loose in the corner for a wide-open 3-ball following an offensive rebound snared by the Spartans, the Warriors’ buffer had then been trimmed down the least it could possibly be, 59-58, with roughly one minute still to play and momentum tilting back in Spot’s direction.
But as is usually the case in games that get decided by a possession here, a possession there, it’s those little things, say foul shooting for instance, that make the biggest difference.
For the game, while Warwick was far from stellar at the charity stripe overall, the freebies sunk at the most critical junctures would bear the sweetest fruit. Such as the case here with things flirting on the knife’s edge but Warwick senior guard, Parker Horst, proceeding to toe the line and step up to the moment in knocking down the offering, making it a 62-58 ballgame with 41.1 seconds left. Later, following an unforced turnover on Garden Spot’s ensuing offensive possession that largely closed the door, another successful 2-2 venture to the line courtesy of Washington helped to nail it shut in totality.
And while it certainly had it’s share of turbulent moments throughout, both generated internally but also by way of a very game Garden Spot crew who just kept swinging throughout all 32 minutes as well, it would indeed prove to be a successful business trip to New Holland on Wednesday night by the end of it from Warwick’s perspective considering how it would culminate in a 66-58 final verdict that not just moved the Warriors out to an 11-2 mark on the season overall, but it also kept them a game ahead of the pack within Section Two as their divisional record now stands at a sultry 5-0 clip looking towards the back half.
“It’s one of those things on the road where it’s not all great, you’re kind of walking through it, and you got to yourselves through it,” Warwick head coach, Chris Christensen, surmised afterwards. “At the end of the day, it’s a case of where you get the win, and you move on. I thought our guys did a good job of coming around considering we weren’t exactly all there from the start.”
“We weren’t the aggressors,” he added of what could be attributed to his team’s slow start following the landing of their initial first punch that built a six-point lead at a 7-1 count. “We were catching with our feet flat, guys not catching ready to shoot, guys just looking to swing it to the next guy instead of all five guys being ready to play.”
“(Garden Spot) made a lot of shots in the first half,” remarked Christensen of the opposition. “They were draining shots, but I thought (the issue) was more the offensive end honestly and just getting ourselves in a rhythm. We weren’t really doing what we worked on in terms of catching ready to go, putting (Garden Spot) back on their heels. I didn’t think we did a great job with that pretty much at all,” he remarked now with a bit of a dry, postmortem laugh of reflection. “We wanted to get out and run in transition and not just allow (Garden Spot) to set up while we walk it down the floor. But once we figured out what we were doing and supposed to do, things got a lot better.”
But perhaps the most unsung hero of this night wouldn’t be captured solely by looking at the final box. Or maybe it would depending on how you want to look at it. For that, Caleb McCamant, the Warrior tasked with hounding Jace Conrad around the floor throughout much of the entire evening, his yeoman’s work could never be understated in how it held Garden Spot’s most prominent scorer without so much of a bucket throughout the span of an entire half on Wednesday.
“Everyone had their matchups, but he was the one stuck to (Conrad) in terms of no help or anything like that,” said Christensen of McCamant and his role on the defensive end coming into the night and being assigned to a team’s top perimeter player more often than not in general. “He’s just a good player,” he continued of Conrad. “We told Caleb, ‘You’re doing everything right with getting a hand up. You’re doing everything you need to do. (Conrad) is just making tough shots. Stick with it.’ That’s a credit to Jace though. He can score the ball. But I thought Caleb did a really good job all things considered….If Caleb plays like that and continues to play that way, things will continue to go in his favor.”
On this night at least, Warwick in many ways certainly couldn’t have afforded to live without it.
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