Cedar Crest Blocks Out The Noise, Withstands Stern Columbia Test As Falcons Await Date With Manheim Central In League Semifinals
Written by: Andy Herr on February 14, 2023
For all the unique and just overall special things that helps set the Lancaster-Lebanon League tournament apart from its other competitors found within District 3, matchups like this are the reason why.
You see, having a Section One team saunter into the home gym of a Section Four team isn’t a scene you’d likely see save for the league tourney. And for good reason too. After all, putting your District 3 power ranking –if not your season as a whole—on the line by going into a hornet’s nest and perhaps suffering a loss, especially the likes of the atmosphere consistently found inside Columbia’s Kreiser Gymnasium, isn’t exactly a well-thought decision unless you are a 6A squad who would rather throw caution to the wind. But once the week-long gauntlet begins, teams such as Cedar Crest needn’t worry about the power rankings and everything else on the outside. Here, starting on Monday night high atop the hill in Columbia, stood two squads with realistic dreams of reaching Manheim Township for the league finale come Friday night.
Aside from that, there were other factors at play entering the night that helped to make this an intriguing matchup of the upmost polar opposites. First and foremost, you had the insatiable aspect of Lebanon County having to travel south into Lancaster County. Make no mistake about it, those county bragging rights mean nothing, yet somehow also mean absolutely everything at the very same time. From there, the two programs themselves had literally gone about half a century from tipping off against one another at Columbia. Yet even when you put the historical significance of this particular meeting taking place on Monday aside for just a brief moment, these two teams themselves could not have possibly gone into the week riding two entirely different waves of momentum had they tried.
For the hosts, while they still came away with Section Four’s top seed, their last outing would be enough to even give the most ardent of Crimson Tide backers even just a little bit of pause. Sure, while you can’t knock Columbia’s resume as a whole in 2022-23, their decisive 73-46 setback at the hands of Lancaster Mennonite back on Wednesday, their first loss against a team from the state of Pennsylvania since the second night of the season back on December 3rd, was most certainly not a result anyone could really see coming. Suffice to say, the Tide’s collective mettle and mental fortitude would be put to the test when they welcomed arguably the conference’s most powerful franchise over the course of the last decade or so.
When speaking of the Cedar Crest, it would be apropos to break the Falcons’ season into two parts.
The first portion? Well, that would have to span from opening night on December 5th against Governor Mifflin up until to January 20th against Hempfield. You see, coming out of the second of their two meetings against the eventual Section One champs, the Falcons were a team that quite frankly seemed lost at sea with their postseason fate rapidly slipping away from them. However, to their credit, most of which needs to be doled out to head coach Tommy Smith assuredly given that he is the one overseeing all the pulleys and levers from which to push, Cedar Crest has been an entirely different version of themselves. And it’s a version they obviously welcomed with nothing but open arms.
Ironically, just a mere matter of hours following that loss to Hempfield for the second time this season, the Falcons had an early morning wakeup call to tangle with Bishop McDevitt and the L-L/Mid-Penn Shootout down at Manheim’s Doe Run Elementary. Even still, with adversity and metaphorical water seemingly rushing into their collective boat from every possible angle entering that weekend affair, Cedar Crest took off and never looked back that Saturday afternoon. As far as the specifics of it all, the Falcons would rattle off seven consecutive wins to wrap up the regular season slate, including a perfect 4-0 jaunt over Section One competition not named Hempfield, a scintillating closing stretch which was punctuated with their best win of the season that came in a de-facto L-L tourney play-in game at McCaskey where the Falcons bested their southern rivals by a 61-51 final count that effectively locked the Tornado out of any forms of postseason play.
So, for two teams that came into the night with two very different backgrounds and overall narratives — not to mention a beyond-capacity crowd that was frothing at the mouth to see their beloved squad take a rare Section One pelt and hang it on their wall– the stage was set for what figured to be a perfect example as to why the L-L League tournament is the best tourney found inside the entire mid-state. And suffice to say, while the crowd who had gathered high upon “The Hill” at Columbia most certainly did their part and then some to try and will their Crimson Tide across the finish line over the course of 32 minutes, the beasts from Section One would ultimately cause a dim hush to fall upon crowd by the end of it all.
But to start things off, both these two worthy competitors seemed to be nothing if not dead-even.
Case in point, while a strong move inside by way one of the few seniors inside the Cedar Crest rotation, Nolan Groff, allowed the visitors donning their battle grey uniforms to knot things up at 4 apiece with just over three minutes having ticked off the first quarter clock by that point, a dead-eye triple sunk by Columbia’s Artie Poindexter in the face of Cedar Crest’s 2-3 zone awarded the lead to the Crimson Tide at 7-4 with just 1:30 left to play in the opening act by that point in time. And while the hosts would be able to pour in another from bonus distance –this by way of 5’10 sophomore sniper Ladarian Miller not long afterwards– a bucket tallied by Cedar Crest’s Fernando Marquez just mere moments before the first quarter horn blared out made it an 11-10 affair in favor of the Falcons with the game getting set to head into its second frame following an opening eight minutes that quite frankly saw both teams appear slightly timid inside this tiny coliseum.
Yet even the second quarter did little in terms of allowing either side to try and conjure up some separation against the other.
Sure, while there was the deuce inside that came via the efforts of wiry Columbia 6’0 junior guard Jordan Poole that sliced the Cedar Crest lead down to the slimmest of margins, 18-17, with 4:10 left to go in the opening half, the difference between the two benches remained at a penny once both teams retired to their respective dressing quarters for the halftime recess. That said, while the home crowd certainly would’ve preferred that the aforementioned bunny inside by way of Poole would’ve given their side the advantage up on the scoreboard, they would ultimately get their wish about three minutes of game time later as a critical 3-ball was fired in courtesy of Ladarian Miller yet again, this time making it a 21-20 Crimson Tide advantage which is where things remained with the third quarter getting set to commence.
Finally, and surely not a moment too soon as far as the Crest contingent had to be concerned, their Falcons finally began to make a push.
First up in that regard came a bucket inside by the biggest mismatch puzzle piece found out on the floor all evening long in both a literal and figurative sense, Aiden Schomp, as the Cedar Crest 6’6 junior big man tallied himself a deuce from point-blank range to put the team from Lebanon County up 24-21 with five minutes and change still left to go in the third.
But that would prove to be more than enough time for Cedar Crest to just continue pushing onward and upward.
In fact, the Falcons’ onslaught came so fast and furious that the Crimson Tide found themselves needing to burn a timeout to try and break the momentum hex currently levied against them as a wonderful dish from Fernando Marquez to Owen Chernich underneath put Cedar Crest up by a touchdown at 28-21 with roughly half of the third stanza still yet to unfold.
From there, it became readily apparent that not even the brief stoppage employed by Columbia to try and swing momentum back in their favor would do much of anything when it came to deterring their opposition.
At least it likely didn’t feel like that way once the Falcons’ cushion was upped to a dozen at 33-21 following a J’Veon Reyes-Vega bucket that was quickly followed up by a Marquez three-point play with the Tide plagued by extremely cold shooting from the field which precluded them from making any sort of incision into the bubble rising against them with the quarter quickly spiraling towards its inevitable conclusion.
And to their credit, Columbia continued to display some of that same unrelenting fight that has come to epitomize their program for generations upon generations even despite their current bout from the field.
In that regard, while Dominic Diaz-Ellis’ bucket inside might have only been worth two points as far as what the rules of basketball would lead you to believe, rest assured that it would be a pivotal bucket nonetheless seeing as how it ended Columbia’s metaphorical journey across the desert when it came to the Tide’s collective scoring drought. And while the Diaz-Ellis bucket would chip the Falcons’ lead down to ten at 33-23, the hosts would be able to race back within shouting distance once the third frame ultimately did conclude with Cedar Crest holding serve at 33-26 inside a cinderblock building whose decibel level was akin to something like that of a runway found at Chicago O’Hare.
Simply put, with the game still on the line and momentum perhaps starting to finally teeter in Columbia’s direction with the game heading into its most critical of junctures, the time was ripe for someone on either side to step up and put forth game-winning plays.
Well, first and foremost in regards of whom decided to step onto center stage to try and partake of those very spoils was Cedar Crest’s Leo Tirado. And while playing with a moxie and headiness that you may not have originally suspected coming from a 5’8 underclassman, Tirado was the definition of fearless as he rose up and fired in an enormous jumper in transition to make it a 37-26 Falcons’ advantage just 1:30 into the new period.
Not to be outdone though, Columbia’s Ladarian Miller also flashed a fearlessness in his own right with the game heading down its final pike as the Tide’s 5’10 sophomore proceeded to pour in one of his three triples on this night that helped him finish alongside Jordan Poole with both sharing in team-high 10-point outings once all was said and done while also more importantly closing the deficit down to a 39-31 difference with plenty of time still yet to evaporate.
However, the time left untouched on the game clock would be all the more gracious to the guests than it would be to the hosts as fate would have it.
Sure enough, with the game being played within a ten-point window by and large for the remainder of the evening, something best exemplified by an Owen Chernich take to the cup which preceded a tough-as-nails trey sunk by Reyes-Vega that made it a 46-36 affair with three minutes left, the Crimson Tide’s cold shooting unfortunately continued to remain near room temperature down the final stretch as far as their fans would see it as the Falcons were eventually able to close it out and come away with a well-earned 54-40 triumph over Columbia inside one of the scariest places that any Lancaster-Lebanon League team can possibly find if their main objective is to walk out a winner by the end of the night. And while vanquishing Columbia on the Tide’s home floor is an achievement in and of itself, Cedar Crest’s victory would be even larger in the sense that not only did it move the Falcons into the semifinal round of the league tournament on Wednesday night at Conestoga Valley for a tantalizing matchup opposite of Manheim Central, but this particular win on Monday night also was also a fitting punctuation mark on what would head coach Tommy Smith’s 200th win while sitting on his alma mater’s bench over the last 10+ seasons.
Needless to say, one doesn’t just magically arrive at 200 wins by accident. No, it most certainly takes skill to not only have the overall longevity to not just endure, but also succeed at that high of a level as Smith has over the last decade plus. And rest assured, it wasn’t all that long ago, like just a few weeks ago to be exact, that the Falcons’ head man would have his all of his coaching acumen put to the test with this 2022-23 team appearing to tread water in the middle part of January.
“I think our kids understood how good they are,” a water-logged Tommy Smith said postgame after getting drenched with water back in the Falcons’ locker room at the end of Monday night’s contest when asked about the sheer metamorphosis his club promptly made right before its final stretch run. “I think (his team) were feeling themselves out a little bit for the better part of the season, trying to figure out their role and their niche. I think we kind of figured it out in that Bishop McDevitt game. Ironically, we also figured out that we can play a zone defense,” Smith also went on to mention. “We had no practices before McDevitt and I think it all started there. We had a different gameplan and if we wanted to win, our kids had to be locked in and understand what exactly what we wanted to do. Since then, we’ve been locked in understanding players, tendencies and it’s really helped us…..Again, I think we’re understanding roles and understanding gameplans,” Smith added of the change. “We have a tremendous group of athletes in there. Figuring out who’s a scorer, where his spots are to get it to…. Until we got our backs up against the wall and it was do-or-die, that’s what it took for them to buy in and understand where they are.”
And as far as the cauldron of an atmosphere of which they had to navigate through on Monday night to begin the week? Well, that too impressed Cedar Crest’s head man.
“I thought they handled it really well,” said Smith of his group. “We had a taste of it Tuesday at McCaskey where the environment there was just fantastic. We talk about embracing it. We talked about how, ‘Hey, this a different place than you’ve ever played before. Go in there and embrace your opportunity to play in this great environment.’ I think we have, especially these last two games.”
Even still, being mindful of the learning curve that comes with playing at an unfamiliar place like Columbia’s while not getting blown away by it all was something of the upmost importance to Smith and his squad on Monday. After all, they had seen that very same movie play out time and time before.
“We’ve been in some games already where you look up and it’s, ‘Man, that was a 12-0 run, or a 14-point run we just gave up.’ We knew that these guys could do that,” said Smith praising Columbia. “We talk about practicing these types of situations. We’ve just gotten better and better at it. Again, I think we knew and understood everything surrounding this game of not letting (Columbia) go on that type of 10-0 run to where we could get ourselves into some trouble.”
Of course, we’d also be remised if we didn’t mention how Tommy Smith also just so happened to ascend into some pretty rarified air with his team’s victory over the Tide. That of course being the 200-win club, a shining achievement that Smith has so rightfully earned during his time leading the ship back home in Cornwall.
“How about this? When I got hired to coach at Cedar Crest High School, a personal goal I made for myself was to get 100 wins,” Smith candidly remarked. “To be here with 200 is just remarkable. More than anything, it speaks volumes about the players I’ve coached in my 13 years here. You can go through and name ‘em. I’ve just kind of guided them along because those guys are the reason why I’m here right now. It’s just been awesome.”
And while “awesome” might be the word to describe 200, there were likely have to be even bigger and better adjectives to potentially describe 201 and 202 respectively should they happen to take place this week. Why? Well, that would mean that Cedar Crest, arguably one of the best programs that L-L can lay claim to over the last decade or so that Smith himself has directed, would be able to take the conference’s most prized trophy back to Lebanon County late on Friday night.
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