Lancaster Country Day Turns Up The Dial, ‘Answers The Call’ As Cougars Rattle Off 46 Second Half Points To Nab Key Section Win At Northern Lebanon
Written by: Andy Herr on December 18, 2024
Jordan Ashby (L) and Chris Dukes (R). LLHoops POG’s in Lancaster Country Day win over Northern Lebanon
If you find yourself playing in what most would coin to be a “big game” when the calendar reflects that its only December 17th, chances are that expectations are high for you and your team. On Tuesday night up in Fredericksburg, that was indeed the subplot that surrounded this Lancaster-Lebanon League Section Four affair.
For the hosts, the Northern Lebanon Vikings, don’t let the somewhat unassuming 2-3 overall record and their even 1-1 mark in section play to date fool you or catch you off-guard. To some, while the notion of moving down from the ranks of Section Three and into Section Four is not exactly the most desirable of pathways –perhaps equal parts due to the sheer strength that the division happens to possess this year along with the somewhat unfair belief that it automatically signifies a trip “downward” without any sort of further evaluation or digging deeper—this might have actually been a case when talking about the Northern Lebanon boys’ basketball program where a change in scenery could actually do them some good. Not because the Vikes were simply outclassed and overmatched while competing in Section Three that is to say, but rather because this just “feels” like more of a home base where NL should be residing, albeit feelings and “vibes” not exactly being a scientific method of study of course. And this year, while coming into the 2024-25 ride with arguably their most palpable levels of excitement that the Vikings have had entering a season’s journey in recent memory, Northern Lebanon appeared to have fit this divisional landscape like the perfect puzzle piece by coming in.
Again, while some may see that 1-1 league record and think nothing more of it, it was indeed a pretty sultry .500 clip all things being equal.
For the triumph, that happened to come in their last outing down at Pequea Valley against a tough Braves’ squad who, like Northern Lebanon, is having arguably its strongest signs of promise and progress in a handful of years behind Ehren Graybill’s second-year on the job down in Kinzers. For the defeat, while suffering a one-point loss is heartbreaking enough standing on its own merit, add in the fact that it came at the hands of one of your most chief rivals, and suddenly a 45-44 loss against Annville-Cleona last week is bit more tough to stomach in the Vikings’ perspective. But there again, after their first two league games alone, Northern Lebanon found themselves all of one-point shy coming into the new week with a 2-0 mark in section play. For that reason, if NL could emerge out of Wednesday night with a 2-1 record, the Vikings would suddenly position themselves as one of the foremost teams to watch as the month of January gets set to begin and the divisional races start to heat up.
Now, as far as their opposition in this Tuesday night tussle was concerned, if you want to talk about expectations, they might not get any bigger in size and stature than the aspirations that Lancaster Country Day hopes to make good on once the dust settles a few months from this moment in time.
They’re talking titles on this campus. Yes, in the plural. Ordinarily, maybe that’s a little bit of overshooting your skis as they say. But not here. Not with these Cougars.
Why plural you ask? Why not? Starting off with their home territory, L-L Section Four, there will be some level-setting to the rest of the crop you’d have to figure, at least preemptively. Sure, Lancaster Mennonite looks loaded for bear once more with their own dreams on a jaunt through March, Annville-Cleona looking the best they have in years too, this potent Northern Lebanon squad enters the scene being the proverbial “big boy” in jumping into the pool, but you also have the likes of Columbia, the other program along with Mennonite who has simply been untouchable here these last few seasons inside Section Four, breaking in an almost entirely different roster this winter. To be sure, things could look very different by the time we set the conference playoff brackets into stone come the second week of February. And hey, when you bring back the entire roster back in tow from a year ago off a team that reached the Elite Eight of the state playoffs — not the least which includes bringing back arguably the best backcourt in the entire conference in Jordan Ashby and Chris Dukes respectively, a pair of guards who easily could have their names appear on the 1A All-State ballot by the end of the year — you’d have to like the Cougars chances of perhaps finally making it to what would be the school’s first-ever showing in the L-L playoffs.
On a grander scale, namely the District 3 playoffs, well, that too feeds into the larger discussion surrounding Country Day.
Gone is Linville Hill. To be sure, they would be head and shoulders considered the odds-on favorite to capture the District 3-1A title, but also perhaps the PIAA state title as well. Shoot, they still might be regardless. However, after getting the call from the governing body over in the Mechanicsburg over at the PIAA offices telling Linville Hill that were bumping up to the 2A ranks this season, suddenly the local 1A landscape doesn’t seem nearly as daunting as it once had. Granted, it’s not like La Academia, an equally potent private school located in the Lancaster city limits is going to go away and disappear from view, but if you were handicapping the field, you’d have to figure that if everything were to go according to script, the heavy odds would favor an eventual La Academia and Lancaster Country Day District 3-1A final on the Giant Center floor if things evolve as most would suspect.
And while all that is great and certainly reason for making sure that the Cougars are worthy of being a stop in anyone’s travels this year, there are no title(s), if you can’t get the first. For them, after losing their first two section games against Lancaster Mennonite and Annville-Cleona right off the bat, not that an 0-3 record would necessarily be an impossible feat to overcome per se, but you’d certainly being make life far, far harder on yourself than needed. For that reason, that’s precisely why Country Day could ill-afford to let this game at Northern Lebanon on Tuesday evening pass them by.
So, has the stage been accurately been set by now? Suffice to say, this game that was about to tip off in earnest was sure to give the Section Four standings a bit of clarity as for how things might develop and take shape, yes, albeit still a week away from Christmas.
In the end though, there really would no grand pregame representation as for how this one would take develop. Instead, both teams gave the paid patrons in attendance far more than the initial face value of the tickets alone.
For Lancaster Country Day, while they rightly have lofty expectations as outlined, even for a team as talented as they are, they too would be hard-pressed to replicate the second half showing in which they exerted against Northern Lebanon on Tuesday night inside one of the conference’s toughest of venues to walk out of. A successful trip northward as fate would have it.
In terms of the initial moments however, it’d be hard to pick out as to who was exactly was the leader in the clubhouse. Sure, while Northern Lebanon’s Andrew Via would tally four early points to give his side the lead, so too would Country Day’s Jordan Ashby counter back as the Cougars’ junior scoring-machine sunk a pullup jumper which knotted things up a 9-apiece with 2:20 left to play in the opening frame. All told though, thanks to a timely 7-0 spurt that was ignited by way of that same Ashby J, the Cougars were able to find themselves with the 14-9 cushion following a back-and-forth opening stanza with momentum shifts aplenty shared between either side.
Yet right from the start of the second quarter, Lancaster Country Day just kept pushing the envelope against their hosts.
Case in point, the other half of the ultra-talented Cougars’ backcourt, Chris Dukes, getting in on the act by bombing a trifecta whose location on the shot chart would show it to be closer to the timeline rather than the bucket itself, as Dukes injected a sizable dose of momentum in the visitors’ favor before a sweet Ashby to Kane Kirby dish inside the next time down the floor would then prompt Northern Lebanon into burning a timeout while staring up at a 19-13 deficit with 4:25 left in the first half in the aftermath of 6’0 junior wing’s bunny inside.
Fortunately, a not a moment too soon as far as they had to feel, the Vikings finally hit their stride.
While there were several who had their hand in helping to turn the NL ship around amid this dangerous time of the game, Donovan Brandt’s contributions certainly could not be overstated as the 6’2 senior guard’s personal 5-0 rally would help put the finishing touches on a now 21-19 lead in favor of the home side with their fans understandably demonstrating their adulation accordingly.
Yet right when Northern Lebanon surely had to be feeling good about things, Chris Dukes would be the one to alter their state of mind.
Typically, if someone is going to willingly hoist from near the halfcourt line, you’d let them have said shot. But not with the Cougars’ 6’0 senior sniper of a southpaw. Not when he had already demonstrated his ability to do so while scoring the lion’s share of Country Day’s points during the opening half as well. However, Dukes would yet again get loose from the Vikings’ defensive clutches in the waning stages of the second quarter before promptly burying another triple that was somehow even further back compared to the one previous, putting LCD back in front with a 25-23 score with all of 74 seconds to play before the recess.
That said, the Vikings weren’t done throwing haymakers either.
For them, the 3-ball giveth away, but it also cometh. Such was the case once 5’11 senior guard, Brian Bicksler, rose up and fired in a key trey that would ultimately help his troops head into the dressing room with a 28-27 lead following an explosive first 16 minutes of play between two clearly worthy foes.
Perhaps it was the momentum garnered from the back half of the second quarter. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, Northern Lebanon had found it and then kept using it once the third quarter got underway against Country Day.
Ironically, for as nip and tuck as the first two quarters largely were, the Vikings then began to open things up. In fact, following a pair of Brady Krall freebies at the charity stripe that came on the heels of an Andrew Via pullup jumper, the hosts had suddenly grabbed hold of the largest lead of the evening enjoyed by either team, 38-27, with roughly five minutes left to play in the third.
13 minutes. That’s all that stood between that earlier possibility of Lancaster Country Day starting off league play at an 0-3 clip considering their current predicament and NL’s home gym now up for grabs in terms of intensity and excitement. Well, how does a rebuttal to the tune of 3.5 points-per-minute for the remainder of the contest sound for a metric to see as to how exactly this contest did such a dramatic about-face?
Innocently enough, it all started with a Chris Dukes’ layup in transition to help break Country Day’s current drought. But from there on out, the Cougars’ booked themselves a one-way ticket out of the Sahara Desert and directly to Niagara Falls in terms of how their buckets would suddenly come by the boatload.
Fine, after the Dukes’ lay in, it still remained a nine-point contest at 38-29. No worry. Okay, after a pair of Cam Harris buckets at the tin, it then became a 41-36 affair, but still a couple of a couple possession lead. But behind their lethal press which saw Northern Lebanon be nothing if not flummoxed as a result, Country Day had successfully decimated the once commanding Vikings’ buffer down to just a penny at 41-40 following a Jordan Ashby bucket at the cup as the Cougars had successfully climbed the mountain back in not even three minutes’ time. Next, following a Chris Tucker bucket courtesy of yet another turnover generated by their press, Country Day found ownership of the scoreboard by virtue of their 42-41 lead.
It would be a lead which they would never relinquish.
All told, while it would’ve been somewhat understandable to see Country Day perhaps take their foot off the gas in that they had now gone out in front, the Cougars weren’t about to entertain such a foolish notion. In fact, following an Ashby tripe which not only helped the Cougars’ star guard conclude his evening in posting an 18-point showing by the end of it all, the here and now showed Country Day with a 52-41 lead at the end of the third, an idea somewhat farfetched at best given how Northern Lebanon appeared to have been exerting their collective will mere moments’ prior.
But to their credit, even when things may have seemed lost for them too given their current state of affairs, Northern Lebanon would respond in kind with the gutsiest of retaliations to muster one last go of knocking Country Day off their perch.
Then again, Country Day’s leading scorer on the night, Chris Dukes, poster of a 26-point showing by the end, certainly didn’t the do the Vikings any favors with his floater in the lane which then made it a 60-52 ballgame after seeing Northern Lebanon close the gap down to four not long before. However, following a pair of triples cashed in courtesy of Andrew Via and Riley Messinger respectively, Northern Lebanon had found themselves all the way back within a pair, 60-58, with just a few minutes left to go in regulation.
But there would be no need for extra time.
And while the dynamic duo of Ashby and Dukes largely helped to be the jet fuel for this eventual Cougars’ triumph – a phrase you could probably copy/paste into most any Lancaster Country Day game left this season – Country Day could not have achieved such a feat on this night had it also not been for their core cast. With that in mind, perhaps there was no example more befitting of them largely putting this game out of reach once and for all following than with an old fashioned three-point play compiled by Kane Kirby, making it a 65-60 affair with 1:58 left to play, helping to personify that the shared efforts amongst Kirby, Chris Tucker, and Cam Harris were equally notable with Country Day having to change their approach in ratcheting up the pressure to ultimately flip the complexion of the game.
Yet despite their best efforts down the final furlong, Northern Lebanon just didn’t have enough time on the clock, or gas in the tank, to chip into the existing Country Day cushion the rest of the way. And once the buzzer finally sounded on what was a phenomenal high school basketball game where both teams had obviously emptied their respective tanks, there must ultimately be a victor. For this victor, Lancaster Country Day, a 46-point performance in the second half that helps catapult you out to a 73-62 final verdict, well, that surely made the lengthy bus ride home to the outskirts of Lancaster city late on a Tuesday winter’s night all the more fun.
Fun. Maybe not the exact verbiage Country Day head coach Jon Shultz would say of his team’s practice on Monday night prior to this one.
“We didn’t have the best practice last night. I got on them for some things,” the Cougars’ coach admitted in the aftermath of his team’s dizzying victory against Northern Lebanon. “To their credit though, they answered the call,” Shultz was equally quick point to out regarding his team’s response.
“The one thing that we talked about in the locker room before this game, our keys, we always have a couple of keys for each game, but one was to trust the process. I know, bit of a coaching cliché right there,” he said with a smirk. “All that stuff. Cutting hard, setting hard screens, getting defensive stops, taking each possession to reset yourself, not looking at the scoreboard, knowing that the scoreboard will take care of itself,” added Shultz. “We worry way too much about what the scoreboard says at times. In the third quarter tonight, that was the epitome of that. We are down nine, but then we score, get a stop. Get a score, get a stop. Then, we look up and go, ‘Oh my gosh. It works,’” he said of seeing his team witness the age-old mantra in real time amid their furious charge. “I was really proud of them for that. Staying in the moment that comes with each possession.”
“Again, it was just a one possession at a time kinda thing,” Shultz remarked regarding his team’s flurry of an actualized 25-3 salvo over the final minutes of the third quarter on Tuesday night. “It was really just about resetting ourselves, getting in the right positions, making sure nobody’s behind you, and doing that right every single time…I was just very happy with what they did tonight.”
“We knew coming in that (Brady) Krall was a tough kid. A big, strong, tough kid,” Shultz remarked of the gameplan and his team’s first time matching up against Northern Lebanon given the Vikings’ move into their division now. “We wanted to match up with (Northern Lebanon),” he continued. “Our guys are not super big, but they are scrappy as all heck and not afraid of physical play. I thought we did a nice job in limiting (Krall) in terms of what I’ve seen him do. But don’t get me wrong there, he still had a really good game,” Shultz said with a bit of chuckle coated in relief despite the Vikings’ 6’4 junior forward’s 16-point showing against his comparatively undersized squad.
“We’re still figuring some things out,” the program’s only coach since the school’s inception into the Lancaster-Lebanon League seven years ago now said in closing. “We were getting lost on some things defensively. Losing guys to screens, getting lost in corners, so we decided to switch some things up there.”
Maybe it was the switch up to break out the press in order to get out Fredericksburg with their first section win. Maybe it was a team chockfull of promise starting to get their sea legs with the vast majority of the season still yet to develop in front of them. Whatever the “switch” was, Lancaster Country Day certainly found it in the second half on Tuesday night. And while you can’t ever truly pinpoint as to when a team’s season hits an unmistakable upward trajectory, maybe that’s not the case here. Maybe the answer will have been right in front of our eyes the entire time. Maybe Lancaster Country Day’s season of promise truly began this night at Northern Lebanon.
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