Following Torrid First Half Start, Cocalico Withstands Solanco’s Second Half Push As Eagles Ride Hambright’s 30-Point Night To Critical Early Season Section Triumph

Written by: Andy Herr on December 10, 2025

Without fail, Mother Nature always has a funny way of inserting herself into the conversation when it comes to winter weather found here in central Pennsylvania, almost always throwing a wrench into everyone’s collective plans as it relates to high school basketball most of all.

Funny thing is, she wasted little time this year when it came to becoming a main character.

Last week, Tuesday to be exact, winter weather earlier in the day prompted every game on that day’s tentative slate to be postponed save for one, Dallastown traveling to McCaskey. One of the squads who fell victim to the reshuffling as a result? Solanco.

Ordinarily, rescheduling games this time of the year is just part of the deal and comes with the territory. Well, except for this instance for the Golden Mules.

Here, after having their season-opening game against Manheim Central now get pushed back to early February, that left the Mules in the odd position of not having another “first” game scheduled for an entire week later, a road section game at that, with a trip to tangle with Cocalico.

On the other hand, Cocalico meanwhile already had two games under their belts, a pair of road wins found against the likes of 6A foes found in Governor Mifflin and Penn Manor respectively, to get the Eagles’ campaign off to a massive boost. A campaign that comes with a ton of anticipation and optimism, mind you.

And not that one game would a season define, especially with it only being December 9^th on the calendar, dropping a home section game against a troublesome foe, one that came to Denver without any game film and was obviously jonesing for the opportunity to finally step onto the court for real when talking about Solanco, an odd twist awaited Cocalico when they opened their home gym doors for the first time on Tuesday night.

In the end though, it really couldn’t have turned out much better for the Eagles by the time the final buzzer blared. A win first and foremost, but a win that came with plenty of room for growth and improvement all the same. Oh yeah, getting off to a 1-0 start in divisional play certainly didn’t hurt matters either.

While neither team was truly able to garner much separation from the other throughout the game’s first few minutes, Cocalico saw an opportunity and quickly ran with it.

For that, following a banked-in trifecta hit by way of Cocalico senior guard, Ty Wealand, the Eagles had quickly raced out to an 11-4 advantage, a 10-0 Cocalico salvo in totality, as Solanco took an early timeout while suddenly down by that touchdown-sized count with 2:10 left in the first quarter.

But to their credit, whether it be buoyed by getting knocked back on their heels out of the gate or otherwise, Solanco warmed to the ongoing fight.

Specifically, the Mules’ rally began with a nice reverse finish at the cup courtesy of Solanco senior guard, Nolan Wagner, which preceded a knock-down trey sunk by another member of the Mules’ talented senior class, Isaiah Wright, helping to clip into Cocalico’s advantage and make it a 13-9 contest after the initial eight minutes.

To start the second quarter, Timmy Hambright promptly buried a 3-ball on the Eagles’ first offensive possession to get the hosts off on the right foot.

Problem was, as far as Solanco had to be concerned, it would be Hambright himself who was only just getting started.

After being the one who had helped the Eagles not just claw back to level ground at 4-4 with a triple found back in the first frame before following that up with a take to the cup the next trip down the floor to give the lead to Cocalico at 6-4, a lead which they would never relinquish for the remainder of the night, Hambright continued to be the foremost headache the Mules couldn’t remedy throughout the entirety of the night.

Case in point, while another of his 3-balls — while en route to a 17-point first half showing — put the Cocalico lead out near double digits at 24-15 with 4:40 left before the halftime break, a pair of Hambright takes to the rack in quick succession achieved that goal as the Hambright-led 7-0 flurry pushed the gap out to a 31-15 difference with then 2:13 left before the break.

Lastly, for the final bow put on a dazzling second quarter performance from the entire Cocalico ensemble overall, an offensive rebound and stick-back via Eagles’ 6’1 junior forward, Jackson Matos, mere moments before the buzzer sounded, allowed Cocalico to enjoy the fruits of a 35-17 lead at the intermission for their troubles of the game’s first sixteen minutes of action.

Did we mention that Timmy Hambright proved himself to be a problem for the Golden Mules to try and hold under wraps on Tuesday night?

If not, allow his 3-ball to conclude the first Cocalico offensive possession of the third quarter to help illustrate the point as the Eagles’ guard was well on his way to finishing the evening with a sizzling 30-point bucketing against Solanco.

And while Cocalico largely kept their guests at an extended arm’s length throughout much of the third frame, a pair of key late quarter buckets tallied by the Solanco senior wing who ended as the team’s leading scoring on the night with a 14-point showing, Kiran Ludgate, helped to trim the almost insurmountable Eagles’ lead down to a somewhat modest 14-point gap, 44-30, prior to the onset of the game’s final act.

But the Mules just kept pushing the envelope with time of the essence for their comeback bid.

In fact, following a pair of enormous buckets over the course of the fourth quarter’s first 24 seconds tallied exclusively by Solanco senior guard, Owen Kut, there seemed to be a bit of drama afoot even with Cocalico holding serve by virtue of the 44-34 count.

Drama indeed.

For starters, coming in the aftermath of a 3-ball sunk by Nolan Wagner which was later followed up by a Daniel Bailey hoop plus the harm at the tin, Solanco had surged back to within five, 44-39, with momentum now teetering in the Mules’ collective direction. Then, even while the gap had grown upwards somewhat in the ensuing moments, a hard-nosed three-point play by the one who started it all, Owen Kut, kept the Mules within reach in the form of a 48-42 score with a tick inside of four minutes left to play.

Yet as he had already proven himself to be, there was not much of a rebuttal to Timmy Hambright’s exploits as far as the contingent who traveled north from Quarryville had to feel.

If he himself wasn’t the one doing the scoring, he had qualms whatsoever when it came to getting others involved, but none more critical than with Hambright’s dish to a waiting Luke Wass waiting underneath the cup as the Eagles’ senior duo helped to calm the waters somewhat while making it a three-possession, 50-42 Cocalico lead with time starting to dwindle.

Appropriately though, when it came to the one formally shutting the down on this valiant late Solanco charge coming down the final stretch, four Hambright freebies at the charity stripe in the final minute ultimately helped to put this one on ice as Cocalico was able to finally exhale and score a key Section Two victory, protecting their home floor in the process, in a 58-51 takedown of Solanco on Tuesday night.

“You look the net result. It’s positive. We have some stuff to clean up obviously, but when you play a really good first half like we did, sometimes you’re able to ride it out and end up with a win,” Cocalico head coach, Seth Sigman, said postmortem.

“It’s a fine line of being aggressive, but also, ‘We don’t need this right now.’ Hopefully we’re learning that in games like tonight where we’re able to still win,” Sigman said of what ultimately transpired to help get Solanco back within a scary margin tied part in parcel with empty Eagles’ trips throughout the second half. “Again though, we want aggressive. We want our guys to be aggressive because we have bunch of guys who can go out and make plays and make shots,” Sigman continued. “When Ty (Wealand) and Tim (Hambright) are out there being aggressive, with so much of the other team’s defense focusing on them, now we can kick out to Carter (Upson) and Ethan (Stradling). Jackson (Matos) and Josh (Bray) inside as well. Luke (Wass) too. He hit a 3 tonight…We have lots of guys that can make plays for us.”

“But, we have to know when the time is. When is the time to be aggressive, and when is the time to pull it out and make the other team play defense,” the Eagles’ coach remarked. “In the second half, when (Solanco) was on the run, that’s when we needed to slow things down.”

“We talked about it in (the locker room) after the game. No one is mad or anything, but we need to use this game to get better,” said Sigman. “We allowed ourselves some mistakes, some leeway, because of how we played in the first half. We were locked in, making shots, sharing the ball, getting it in the paint, and built ourselves a lead (in the first half). Yeah, we gave ourselves some wiggle room. I would’ve preferred us to not use all the wiggle room,” he then quipped. “But, we finally made some plays again when needed to…It’s high school basketball. It’s hard to beat someone by a lot. It just is.”

Perhaps part of the reason for that? At least in this game? Remember that this was Solanco’s first game of the season here, the last and final Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ team to get underway this year. Surely there was a bit of mystery involved leading into this matchup with such an unbalanced oddity of an early schedule involved.

“This was definitely an odd start,” Sigman said when asked of the quirk. “We both had the same snow cancellation last week, but we had more games scheduled and (Solanco) didn’t. And the other thing is, with Scott (Gaffey), he’s a gym rat,” he remarked of Solanco’s first-year head coaching counterpart. “You’re not going to outwork that guy. He’s everywhere. We knew that (Solanco) would know exactly what we wanted to do, the sets we were going to try and run, but there was no mystery to us. There was a lot of mystery to them…Yes, you’re always worried as a coach, but that was eating at me ever since I saw that they wouldn’t play again and we were going to be their first game,” Sigman continued of Solanco.

Now, after emerging victorious following this game, Cocalico can look at the refreshed Section Two standings and see themselves sitting with the lead pack at the head of the class. Something not lost on the head man either.

“We’ve talked about it. We have to go undefeated at home in the section. That’s the goal,” Sigman shared of the implications surrounding this game and those to come behind it. “You can’t afford to drop one at home because life on the road is hard. It’s hard to win on the road. Something weird almost always happens on the road in section games to where you get in a situation you can’t dig out of. You can’t explain it. It’s just hard to win on the road. Yes, starting 0-1 at home in the section is not a recipe for success… It feels crazy to say it this early in the season, but we felt like we really needed to win this game.”

And to their credit, that’s precisely what Cocalico went out and did on Tuesday. From their perspective, they certainly hope there’s more of these where that came from. If they also come while avoiding late-game drama, all the better too.