High Point Rides Fourth Quarter Comeback To Knock Off Lancaster Country Day As Defending District 3-1A Champs Topple Cougars For Second Consecutive Season, March Forward To Semifinal Round
Written by: Andy Herr on February 20, 2026
If the conversation you’re looking to have is centered around the best teams that District 3 produced last season from the rank and file that is the boys’ basketball 1A landscape, you’d have a hard time doing much better than these two.
First, how about the ones who took the district title home last year?
For that would be the High Point Baptist Academy Eagles, a team that while they might’ve started out in the #3 hole to begin last year’s 1A district tourney, ended up finishing as the clear-cut #1 come the end of it all by virtue of 60-52 triumph over Shalom Christian last year up at the Giant Center in taking the gold medal.
As for the other team, while there would be no medals or trophies accrued inside their trophy case when describing last season, it was most certainly historic nonetheless.
You see, last year saw the Lancaster Country Day Cougars check off several “firsts” in their program’s history.
Leading the charge, seeing the Cougars reach the Lancaster-Lebanon League tournament for the first time in the still somewhat infantile stages of the program’s tenure in being a conference member considering it only began back in 2018-19. Beyond that, while Country Day would fall short of making it to the District 3-1A title game last year despite having entered as the #2 seed, the Cougars would still make the most of their eventual draw in the state tournament which saw them awarded with the fourth seed to come out of District 3 before then promptly parlaying that into an eventual state semifinal round appearance, the deepest postseason run ever seen by a Country Day squad.
And as if that wasn’t already enough, how about the added dynamic that it was High Point themselves who had traversed down from Berks County to knock off Lancaster Country Day on the Cougars’ home floor exactly one year ago, only one of two upsets inside the entire boys’ 1A bracket last season that saw a lower seed defeat a higher seed.
Sure enough, fate would have a funny way of intervening here once again considering how the rematch between these two that was originally supposed to take place two weeks ago in the regular season finale before ultimately getting shelved thanks to High Point making the CCAC tournament was put back on the books with a High Point return trip back to Lancaster Country Day in the cards yet again, albeit a taking place a round earlier this season in the District 3 tournament, as the #6-seeded Eagles paid a visit to the #3-seeded Cougars for this, the quarterfinal round of the 2026 1A tourney on Thursday night.
But as far as High Point had to be concerned considering how this one ultimately shook out, they would probably be just fine if all their future postseason excursions feature at least one trip to Parents’ Fieldhouse on the Country Day campus for the rest of eternity given recent history.
Initially, once the ball was tipped off on Thursday night, the in-game difference between these two squads didn’t seem to be as stark of a difference as the three seed line differential might’ve inclined one to believe.
Case in point, a Chris Tucker jumper which made it a 6-5 Country Day lead before a triple not long afterwards that was cashed in by way of High Point’s Reagan Wodicka, putting the visitors back in front by an 8-6 count with 3:40 left to play in a back-and-forth, see-saw opening few minutes.
Turns out, that Wodicka triple would be the last instance of High Point playing with the lead for nearly the remainder of the night. Nearly.
In fact, on the ensuing LCD possession following the Wodicka triple, Tucker would respond in kind with one of his own to aid in the Cougars’ cause, a three-point addition to the Country Day junior’s 15-point first half which in turn saw the homestanding Cougars never really look back following this latest and greatest Tucker bucket.
Specifically, the heater that Country Day was able to finish the opening frame on would crystalize into a tidy and timely 10-0 spurt over the final three minutes and change as a Jordan Ashby trifecta plus a pair of freebies knocked down the newest member of the Cougars’ 1,000-point club allowed the hosts carry the benefit of a 16-8 lead with them into the second stanza.
And inside that second frame, Lancaster Country Day began to push High Point away to at least an arm’s length.
Chief among the LCD haymakers that were landed, an exchange which began with a Tucker 3-ball before a prompt Adryan Cruz take to the cup immediately afterwards, a 5-point swing in the Cougars’ favor which saw the hosts expand their lead out to double figures, 21-10, with the second act sprinting towards its halfway point.
Yet while another Wodicka trey would later get the Eagles back within that single digit margin at 21-13, a Jordan Ashby triple would just as quickly swing things back in Country Day’s favor right then and there to usher the Cougars out to a lead standing at a dozen, 27-15, with all of 2:06 left in the opening half.
In fact, that existing 12-point margin would hold serve over the final two minutes and change as yet another Chris Tucker 3-ball, this one from quite literally behind the backboard itself given how deep he hoisted from within the corner, allowed LCD to saunter into the break with the 30-18 advantage and an added pep in their collective step.
From here, while it wasn’t necessarily time to panic for anyone in either uniform or clothing that had to come to the gym with High Point’s best interests in mind, falling any further behind could indeed prove fatal.
Steadily, albeit perhaps somewhat stubbornly thanks to Lancaster Country Day’s unwillingness to really budge out of the way, while High Point may not have exactly sliced the gap down to a margin which saw the Cougars sweat bullets necessarily, the Eagles were still well within the fight all the same.
Specifically, in a quarter in which the gap largely remained in and around a 10-point window with Country Day holding serve, High Point would gradually inch closer. Something that could be best evidenced by a Reagan Wodicka triple, one of his four splashed down on the evening, making it a 34-29 ballgame with roughly four minutes left in the third.
That said, Country Day featured a sharpshooter of their own, Jordan Ashby, who frequently delivered for his side on this night.
For his heroics that would come in the form of five treys sank to lead all scorers in this quarterfinal round matchup, High Point choosing to go under screens in which Ashby was able to rise and fire proved costly as two more 3-balls cashed in by the Country Day senior guard not just pushed the Cougars’ lead back near that same ten-point bulge once again at 40-31 with time running thin on the third, but it more importantly allowed the hosts some margin for error inside the final eight minutes should they need to utilize it as Country Day rode a 41-34 lead with them into the final stanza.
Turns out, even that wouldn’t be enough to withstand.
Ironically, for a fight and quest that High Point seemed to not make all that much ground up on until that point, things suddenly flipped in their favor once the fourth quarter got underway on Thursday night.
Sure enough, following a pair of back-to-back triples knocked down by way of Wodicka and Carlos Torres respectively, the latter of whom proved to be the Eagles’ leading scorer in the contest who tossed in a team-best 15-point night at the office, that once sizable Country Day lead had been trimmed down to the slimmest of margins, 41-40, with not even two full minutes having evaporated off the fourth quarter clock.
Later, High Point would get back on level ground following a tough and determined take to the tin courtesy of sophomore guard, Grant Rogers, as the Rogers’ bucket knotted things up at a 42-42 count.
But High Point was satisfied with that alone.
No, not when the Eagles’ leading scorer on the season, Mason Rogers, owner of a 15-point-per-game clip, completed an old-fashioned three-point play through contact with 3:08 remaining which not just put the Eagles in front at 45-44, but it also awarded the reigning district champs with their first lead enjoyed since the 3:40 mark of the opening quarter to boot.
From there, without allowing Country Day to get so much an inch, the Eagles began the process of building their lead upwards to five, 49-44, following another Grant Rogers take to the hole before a pair of Mason Rogers freebies at the charity stripe saw the lead balloon out to that five-point margin with 1:15 left to play.
Suffice to say, if Lancaster Country Day had any desires of either extending this game into either extra time or flat-out winning it outright inside regulation, time was of the essence for the Cougars to mount some sort of legitimate charge.
With that mind, seeing the Eagles once again choosing to go under an Ashby triple proved costly for the visitors as three more points added to the bank of the game-high scorer’s eventual point total of 18 got the Cougars back within a pair, 49-47, with then 58.5 left to play.
Then, good fortune seemed to strike the Country Day contingent as a High Point turnover on the ensuing offensive possession resulted in a go-ahead triple knocked down by way of Chase Leed, a clutch, tough-as-nails bucket tossed in by the LCD sophomore guard which promptly put the hosts back in front, 50-49, with 33.9 seconds remaining.
Yet that Country Day momentum and good juju would prove itself to be short-lived.
There, needing to score without any if’s and’s or but’s about it, Carlos Torres was able to heed the call for his squad as the take to the cup by the Eagles’ senior guard made it a 51-50 High Point advantage with Country Day having one final shot to steal this game back inside of the final few seconds.
However, while the Cougars would get a good look with a floater inside the lane with under 10 seconds remaining, the potential go-ahead bucket would fall off the rim, resulting in a Reagan Wodicka defensive rebound which saw the procession march to the opposite end of the floor with just 4.5 seconds left unaccounted for.
And while it would prove itself to be an 0-2 trip to the stripe, a man-sized offensive rebound snared down by Mason Rogers proved to the eventual difference as Country Day was caught out of position of the play, allowing High Point to run out the final few seconds and find themselves triumphant for the second straight season in a playoff game courtesy of Lancaster Country Day fulfilling their hosting obligations following this most recent 51-50 verdict on Thursday which pairs nicely alongside their 60-50 win enjoyed last season on the Cougars’ home floor.
From here, thanks to the litany of 1A schools that District can send forward into the PIAA state bracket, all is not lost for Lancaster Country Day. Sure, while this will be another season in which the Cougars fall shy of winning a district championship since their last back in 2019, making it back to the states for what would be the fifth consecutive season remains a possibility, albeit with absolutely zero margin for error. Now, following this setback against this sudden archnemesis known as High Point Baptist, the Cougars must regroup in short order when they welcome another Lancaster County-based 1A outfit, LaAcademia, into Parents’ Fieldhouse in a win-or-go home scenario on Monday night inside the consolation bracket – a matchup which Country Day already proved themselves to be triumphant in considering the Cougars’ 54-48 victory back on January 14th.
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