For Manheim Central, ‘Little Things’ Add Up As Barons Hold Off Highly Ranked Wyomissing, Ready Themselves For Potentially Historic Postseason Journey
Written by: Andy Herr on January 28, 2025
(Mason Rodgers. LLHoops POG In Manheim Central Win Over Wyomissing In Scoring Game-High 24 Points)
Well, as hard as it may to be believe for some, we’ve finally made it. We’ve actually reached that point in the season where we can discuss the topic that some consider to be taboo in some ways—the District 3 playoff race.
Taboo to some because they have more pressing matters to attend to and can’t be caught looking ahead and putting the cart before the horse if you will. Mention that which “should not be named” far too early, and some view that as inevitable invitation of bringing ill-fate upon yourself thanks to the basketball gods. Fair point perhaps, but there are others which have the ability to walk and chew gum. That being those some teams that have the dexterity to chase league playoff aspirations while also sitting in a comfortable position to where they can also care about their district playoff chances in the same breath. And on Monday night in Manheim, that could’ve have been more accurate for the two teams competing.
For both Manheim Central and Wyomissing, it’d be more than fair to suggest that the Barons and Spartans have both put together wonderful resumes thus far with just two weeks left in the regular season campaign. In fact, coming into this week, both Central and Wyo sat at the top of their divisional standings back in their home conferences of the Lancaster-Lebanon League and Berks League respectively, both in Section Three of their leagues ironically enough, while both squads were also seen sitting inside the top three slots in their respective District 3 power rankings when referencing Wyomissing coming in pegged at #3 in the 4A classification, while Manheim Central began this penultimate while slotted in the #2 position inside of the 5A ranks. Suffice to say, while the upcoming horizon looks nothing if not bright for both of these two clubs in the weeks yet to come, this particular matchup between two high-level squads figured to give each side a good litmus test in a sense upon entering the final stages of the year when the stakes in every game from here on out will be impossible to ignore.
And in some ways, while perhaps there may have been an inherit bias involved that came in prejudging a 4A team from that of a 5A team – albeit with both obviously at the top of their pecking orders as mentioned – for a majority of the 32 minutes played on Monday night, the margin of separation between Wyomissing and Manheim Central appeared to essentially be nonexistent. Fortunately, as far as the home patrons who came out to their sparkling new facility of the “Derb” for this intriguing nonleague affair however, it would be their side who authored a crucial final push to eventually push away come the final gun against this ardent foe.
If you needed further proof as to just how evenly-matched these teams were, the first quarter played on Monday night certainly gave credence to that notion in the most dramatic of ways.
Granted, while Manheim Central had either played with the lead or remained in a stalemate whenever Wyomissing offered up some sort of rebuttal early on, the visitors would finally claim ownership rights of the lead for the first time following a hoop plus the harm compiled by way of 5’10 junior guard, Dom Arguelles, making it an 8-7 Spartans’ advantage with just a tick over three minutes left to be played in the opening stanza.
From there, it was largely the Barons’ turn to play catch up the rest of the way in a sense considering how the hosts required a pair of Chase Book freebies at the charity stripe to trim their deficit back down to a penny at 12-11 with now just a little over 60 remaining in the first quarter. Ironically enough, Book’s free throws would be a microcosm as to how the Barons needed to find scoring throughout the first eight minutes on Monday evening considering how their frigid shooting from anywhere save for the charity stripe and/or inside the painted area was anything but bountiful against the Spartans. That said, cold shooting and all, both Wyomissing and Manheim Central remained in a dead-heat at the end of one given the 12-12 deadlock.
Looking for a run? Wyomissing would be the first team to find such a jolt.
While the early second quarter scoring remained rather tame, a personal 4-0 rally posted by way of Spartans’ 6’1 junior forward, Jashaun Rivera, was anything but, as the springy big man helped to prompt Central into burning a timeout with 4:09 left before half and the visitors from Berks County out in front by a 16-12 count.
Finally, when it came to the Barons filling it up from somewhere other than right around the basket, Manheim’s Mason Rodgers had the cure for what ailed his troops at that moment in time.
In fact, just when it may have appeared as things may have been slipping away from their grasp, the Barons’ senior marksman peppered in an enormous trifecta right then and there to not just the stem the tide of Wyo’s ongoing good juju, but it more importantly sliced the Spartans’ cushion down to the slimmest of margins, 18-17, in little to no time at all following the timeout called.
Yet tit-for-tat the rest of the second quarter remained as while a nice reverse finish at the cup by way of Wyomissing’s Brady Eisenhower bumped Wyo’s lead back out to five at 22-17, that momentum would later get rebuked – thanks to a reverse finish of his own – by Manheim’s Chase Book, making it a one-point margin once again at 23-22 with 90 seconds remaining before the intermission.
All told, while Wyomissing may have been the ones heading to the clubhouse with the 25-22 advantage following the first 16 minutes, there was just an undeniable feeling as to Manheim Central likely coming out of the locker room to start the third quarte far more energized than perhaps they may have been at the start the contest.
Simply put, it wouldn’t take long for that notion to become actualized.
After either trailing or only playing on level-footing following the first few minutes of the opening quarter on Monday night, getting control of the scoreboard would figure to do wonders for the Barons’ overall confidence heading down the back half of this particular contest in the event they could do as such. Well, following an old-fashioned three-point play from the work of Chase Book, who would finish the evening in netting a 15-point outing, the Barons would indeed surge back in front by a 28-27 count with 5:40 left in the third for their first time playing with the lead in more than a quarter here against Wyomissing.
From there, while the basketball “purist” may get energized by seeing Manheim Central routinely execute their halfcourt offense with buckets that come following curl cuts and backdoor finishes, the new-school approach to momentum-stealing remained on full display all the same not long afterwards as Landon Zeiset caught the Spartans sleeping along the backline of their defense with the Barons’ explosive senior forward finishing things off with one of his patented two-handed dunks off the alley-oop to then make it a 30-27 Manheim lead with momentum obviously tilting in the other direction by this point.
And while Wyomissing would do their best to try and weather the existing storm courtesy of a timely 3-ball sunk by Brady Eisenhower which then knotted things back up at 30-30 with 3:45 left to go in the third, a Barons’ trifecta, this one courtesy of Book, expanded the Manheim Central cushion out to a 37-32 difference just 1:05 afterwards.
Sure enough, the remainder of the final two minutes and change inside the third period on Monday would remain within that same five-point window from there on out as a five-point flurry – all of which came courtesy of Mason Rodgers — helped to vault the Barons into the final quarter with the benefit of the 42-37 buffer as a Rodgers’ triple at the horn gave even more of an added lift to the Central troops before entering the final eight.
But in all reality, the hosts really just saved their best for last as it turned out.
There, while obviously energized right from the jump while in the aftermath of a three-point play from the work of another Baron on this their senior night, Ryan Kenneff, Manheim Central began the final period while owning their largest lead of the contest by that point thanks to Kenneff’s exploits which had concluded Central’s opening possession in the most emphatic of fashions. Then, while coming on the heels of another three-point play, this one from Book once more, a pair of Kyle Mylin freebies at line saw the Central cushion swell upwards and into double figures at 57-47 with now just 3:35 left to be played.
And while some performances sometimes can catch you by surprise once the game is over and you tally up the final numbers, Mason Rodgers’ performance against Wyomissing on this night would not exactly fit into the “quiet” category.
Sure, while his 24 points tallied against the Spartans were far away the game’s best secured on a personal level across either side with Rodgers’ next closest competitor in that regard not coming any closer than within nine points of him, his buckets at the most crucial of times for Manheim Central – particularly in the first half – were simply impossible to ignore. For that reason, it seemed rather fitting then that one of the final punctuation marks on this night in totality would come courtesy of the Barons’ 6’4 senior wing as his five-point salvo would then make it a 62-47 Manheim lead with just 2:46 left in the contest.
Later, would Brady Eisenhower would splash down yet another of his triples in the waning stages which made it a 65-51 ballgame, it was unfortunately far too little, far too late from the Spartans’ perspective.
And while the final score would display a 66-55 final verdict in Manheim Central’s favor which may seem to be rather mundane and par for the course when seen from afar in terms of a highly ranked 5A club getting the better of a similar 4A cohort, this would be a case where the final score could easily be deceiving. Yes, while Manheim Central eventually found a way and held off a very game Wyomissing crew for what would become the Barons’ 17th win of the year to the tune of double digits regarding the final margin of victory, this one required Manheim Central’s full attention from the opening tip all the way until the final buzzer.
“I think it was the same for both of us,” Manheim Central head coach, Charlie Fisher, offered up in the postgame following his team’s win on Monday. “Like, Wyo is the same boat as we are with division games coming up here that mean a whole lot in a whole little bit of time,” he clarified. “But it’s the little things. Those are the things you notice with a game like tonight.”
“It’s just one of those things and we try to push this to all our guys, ‘You can’t rely on making shots to determine if you’re doing the right thing or not.’ That leads to bad shots, or it leads to awful shot selection,” said Fisher. “And I’m not just saying for our team. That’s all in the whole body of work for high school basketball in general. You want good, you want great shots. Sometimes, it’s based solely on whether you make it or not. As a coach, you know that’s not the deciding factor.”
“I just think early on (against Wyomissing), we got sort of shell-shocked where nothing was going in,” Fisher remarked. “Then, you’re asking yourself as a player, ‘Was that the right shot or the wrong shot?’ Now you’re thinking about it. That leads to I think it was seven turnovers and seven offensive rebounds we gave up in the first half. That’s the one thing we’ve really been trying to clean up and this was the first time in a while where I think our decision-making sort of allowed the other team to thrive off it.”
But, when it came to finally hitting their stride and getting back on track in Monday night’s affair most specifically, that too was a team-effort in the truest sense of the word on the Manheim Central bench.
“As a coach, I’m like a broken record by this point. I’m preaching, I’m preaching, I’m preaching,” said Fisher of the state of play with the regular season portion of the slate now drawing to a close. “The message is always consistent, but it’s not always consistent from year-to-year. Once you see where you’re at as a team, then the message is consistent. I’m not the type of guy to sort of stand back and see what happens. I want to get in there and see what’s happening,” he added with a laugh. “I had to call two quick (timeouts) tonight, but I try not to do that as much as I have in the past. I really try to let it play it out, but sometimes you sort of see it,” the Barons’ 8th-year head man remarked in trying to help guide his team out of choppy waters as he knows them best. “But at the end there where (the score) just ballooned, that’s really just seniors making plays out there is what that was.”
And for a young coach with an old soul about him, for a team he oversees that routinely makes its most hay while carving up opposing defenses within the halfcourt with traditional Princeton-style backdoors, motion, and other things of the like, even he can see that his players also see the benefit of hitting singles and doubles rather trying to smash a homerun over the fences every time up to steal a phrase from baseball in showing how the little things eventually add up.
“It’s a harder concept because it’s different now than it was 10-15 years ago when we were playing,” Fisher said of the game at large and how it relates internally for he and his troops. “Back in the day when we were playing pickup, that’s what we were doing. We were seeing the backdoors, we were seeing the curls, we were setting the hard screens,” he added while lighting up like a Christmas tree of days gone by. “Kids just aren’t doing that anymore. It’s pass, one-on-one, and you go from there. But in a game like tonight where we stretched the lead out, we did those old-school things. As a coach, you’re just there smiling. As a player, you’re thinking, ‘Hey, that worked. Maybe I’ll do that again.’ At least that’s the hope,” he continued while still laughing.
But beyond the X’s and O’s part of it all, there more than enough “hope” and optimism in Barons’ country this year. Now, after already having inserted themselves into the discussion in regard to being amongst the upper-echelon teams in both the L-L League and District 3 at large, hope may in turn lead to bearing fruit when it comes to potentially snagging some massive prizes that Manheim Central just hasn’t seen in their years out on the hardwood historically. As is typically the case, it’s indeed those “little things” that turn into big things. Or, in the Barons’ case, hopefully little things turning into never-before-seen things. Monday night against Wyomissing helped give them proof to that.
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