Manheim Central Makes History, Yearns For More As Barons Reach Program’s First-Ever League Championship Following Gritty Semifinal Win Over Cedar Crest
Written by: Andy Herr on February 16, 2023
If the old adage is that you want to be playing your best ball of the season at the most critical juncture, you can best believe that the two teams who made up the finale of the twin-bill of league semifinal contests at Conestoga Valley on Wednesday happened to fit that description to a T.
On one side stood the Cedar Crest Falcons. A program already having been defined by its most recent successes that while seeing the Falcons in the Lancaster-Lebanon League’s round of four wasn’t necessarily a total surprise, their journey there was far from typical when you consider that the Falcons’ postseason jaunt largely started weeks ago with their backs up against the wall. However, in large part behind that timeless essence of Cedar Crest stick-to-itiveness, the group from Lebanon County came into their midweek contest against Manheim as winners of eight straight, including a successful trip to one of the most arduous of places to try and snatch up a win, Columbia, just 48 hours prior in the opening round of tourney.
Ironically, their opposition on this night also hadn’t exactly ridden the entire way through the year on cruise control either.
Maybe not, but like Cedar Crest, the Manheim Central Barons entered the 2022-23 campaign as an odds-on favorite to not only make the league tournament, but also would’ve likely split down the middle with votes alongside of Warwick in terms of who would have been a preseason favorite to win L-L Section Two had such a unscientific poll been taken in the preseason. And yes, while you’d basically be trying to find a mole on the Mona Lisa when speaking about the Barons’ year as a whole and their glitzy 19-4 record coming into the matchup with Cedar Crest, those four losses had been somewhat puzzling if you were to simply take them in a vacuum in respect to the totality of it all. That said, thanks in large part to such an astounding overall resume, the Barons did ultimately vanquish Warwick’s stranglehold over the division and claim Section Two all to themselves this season, a fitting end that became officially official with a 65-56 home triumph over the Warriors which in turn propelled Central into the start of this week with a home date to begin the league tournament against Octorara. In that game, while they had to hang on for dear life, the Barons were ultimately able to move by virtue of a hard-fought 49-46 verdict over the Braves which vaulted them into the midweek battle against their neighbors to the north.
And for a game that featured two teams that had come into the evening being nothing if not white-hot, the matchup between the pair figured to live up to all the billing and then some. In short though, it would end up exceeding nearly everyone’s expectations by the end of it all.
But when the game began, it certainly didn’t appear as if the end result would cause much consternation, at least if you happened to have a rooting interest on the Cedar Crest side of things in particular.
Sure enough, the Falcons roared out of the gates to the tune of an early 10-2 lead courtesy of a pair of buckets cashed in by way of RJ Young and Nolan Groff respectively with Groff’s deuce coming off a wonderful feed from point guard Owen Chernich underneath, quickly knocking the Barons off their course with a little over two minutes and change remaining in the opening stanza at that point.
As was to be expected though, especially for a team that has come to define itself by the way in which they promptly get back up off the proverbial mat, Manheim Central had a rebuttal for the early Cedar Crest salvo.
Granted, while the Barons primarily bomb their way to success with hot shooting from beyond the arc on most nights, it was a three-point play of the old-fashioned variety, this from 6’0 senior guard Zach Benner, that ushered MC back within three at 10-7 no more than a minute of gametime later. From there, Central would be able to climb all the way back out of their early hole as a dead-eye triple sunk in front the Barons’ student section by one of the youngest members of its student body, freshman Chase Book, allowed the team clad in all white to breathe much easier considering how they had successfully weathered the first Falcons’ initial onslaught and found themselves back on level ground at 10-10 with the second quarter getting set to commence.
And much in the same vein as the period previous, just when it may have felt as if Cedar Crest had finally solved the riddle of the Barons, Manheim Central was quick to remind them that they could just as easily pull the rug right out from underneath them as well.
Case in point, while the Falcons were able to find themselves in front by a 21-15 difference at the 1:10 mark of the second following a fearless take to the tin via 6’0 sophomore guard Danny Speaks, their two-possession lead of half a dozen would eventually prove to be fool’s gold.
As if to be right on cue, Manheim Central’s Trey Grube made his first considerable imprint on the game with one of this prototypical fearless 3’s on the Barons’ very next trip down the floor offensively before then following that up with what essentially amounted to an answered prayer right before the first half horn with a high-arching shot along the baseline for a key pair which trimmed the Cedar Crest lead down to the slimmest of margins, 21-20, with what figured to be a wild second half still yet to unfold.
True to form, it would be precisely that.
Finally, as if they had to be most concerned at least, the Barons were finally able to get over the hump of the existing Cedar Crest lead that had largely remained in place all evening long as a hoop plus the harm along the baseline from the handiwork of one Jackson Tracy put the Barons up by a 25-24 count just 1:40 into the third frame.
But back came Cedar Crest.
Thanks to a timely 5-0 spurt despite surrendering the lead in the aftermath of the Tracy bucket moments prior, a spurt which was punctuated with a trifecta knocked down by 5’8 junior guard Leo Tirado, Cedar Crest raced back in front at 29-25 over the span of the ensuing 1:08.
However, the advantage up on the scoreboard only continued to see-saw back and forth over the course of the third.
Case in point, the Barons rebuked that Cedar Crest flurry with a run of their own to answer back, this of the 4-0 variety, as an Aaron Enterline bucket inside put Manheim Central back in front at 31-29 with 1:45 still to tick off the clock.
Yet while Manheim Central would rip off a 4-0 run, so too would their opposition as a 4-0 Falcons’ response would eventually conclude the third quarter proceedings with Cedar Crest laying claim to ownership of the narrow 33-31 advantage with the final batch of eight minutes getting set to roll.
Remember that earlier theme that had largely come to encapsulate the first half narrative? That being where Cedar Crest could storm out to what had the potential to be end up being a tidal wave of momentum that would finally wash the Barons away for good? Yeah, so too did the Barons themselves who surely didn’t have any interest whatsoever in playing the role of victim when it came to this metaphorical weather phenomenon.
Maybe, but finding themselves down by a 39-31 count with 6:19 left to play in the aftermath of an RJ Young trey fired in to aid in the Cedar Crest cause certainly didn’t help matters with Manheim Central having to call timeout to try and regroup.
And regroup they most certainly would.
In fact, it took Central little to no time at all in terms of erasing their existing deficit seeing as how another gargantuan trifecta peppered in from the fearless freshman who had played well beyond his years all night long, Chase Book, whittled the Falcons’ lead down to just a pair at 39-37 roughly two minutes afterwards. From there, the gravity of what would amount to a 10-0 Barons’ run would come to fruition as a Trey Grube take to the tin vaulted Manheim back in front at 41-39 with 3:15 left to play by that point.
Not to be outdone though, Cedar Crest remained steadfast in the fight.
When it came to that, following an Owen Chernich drive to the cup which knotted things back at 41-41 with 2:20 left to go, a magnificent baseline out-of-bounds play drawn up by Cedar Crest head coach Tommy Smith and his staff culminated in a massive J’Veon Reyes-Vega triple which put the Falcons back on top, 44-43, with only 1:39 still to play at that point.
And while the Cedar Crest contingent likely felt a little more comfortable once RJ Young rejected a would-be Manheim Central shot on the Barons’ ensuing possession, an enormous take by yet another Manheim Central underclassman, Sam Witmer, would essentially serve as the de facto game-winner as the junior’s bucket underneath not long afterwards made it a 47-46 Barons’ lead with just 15 ticks left to go.
However, if we are keeping with the tidal wave metaphor, it surely felt like a tsunami of euphoria for those dressed in Barons’ garb once Cedar Crest turned it over on their ensuing offensive possession and Aaron Enterline promptly knocked down both of his free throw attempts with 7.3 seconds left to go make it a 49-46 Manheim Central lead with their defense having to mount one final stop. Sure enough, they would their stop as the final buzzer blared out following the Falcons’ missed shot at the gun which signified the Barons’ first-ever trip to the league finals by their virtue of their three-point victory over Cedar Crest, a victory that brought out all the emotions in everyone, not the least of which included their head coach.
“After that, like what do we do?” Fisher questioned out loud with a laugh tinged with exasperation. “You celebrate wins, you celebrate a section title this year, and Manheim Central’s never done this before. It’s awesome. I’m sort of at a loss for words in that perspective,” he acknowledged, a feat in which in and of itself is rather remarkable. “I’m so fixated during the season on winning and getting ready for the next game. Sometimes, and this is sort of the curse of being a head coach, enjoying winning isn’t always there. Sometimes it just feels like relief. In that little moment there, I think I elbowed the wall or did something, but I’m just so proud of my guys,” said Fisher of his celebratory tactics.
“At this point, we have to go into practice tomorrow and it’s just, ‘Beat Hempfield.’ It’s not worrying about being in the championship. It’s making sure we do what we have to do to beat Hempfield,” he was quick to point out. “That’s as good of a team that this league can produce with their size, athleticism, and skill. Hempfield is just incredible.”
But make no mistake about it. His club too has also earned the right to make it to Friday night’s final curtain call. Of course, a large part of which is owed to the Barons’ collective resolve to respond to difficult situations, both on Wednesday night and on the macro level as well.
“I think we just stopped thinking,” Fisher bluntly described of his squad’s ability to dig themselves out of the eight-point gap they appeared trapped inside of during the fourth quarter’s infancy. “I’m serious. I think we just started being instinctual. I thought at times we were thinking too much, second-guessing, and I know we were forcing things,” he added. “There was good run where we got stop, stop, stop, but we came empty in transition three or four times and those add up over time. Even when you look up at the scoreboard and it doesn’t really change, you’re still like, ‘Crap. We could be up two, four, six, whatever.’ It was sort of like, ‘Stop trying to win. Let’s just do what we’ve done all year.’ It just took us to get in an eight-pole hole for us to realize that. That’s what we’ve done all year. Execute when we need to, be aggressive and just play basketball. I don’t think we played basketball until it was 39-31.”
That said, as is the typically the case in high-pressure games, foul shooting inevitably plays a large part down the stretch. In that regard, Charlie Fisher is most certainly thankful he has Aaron Enterline playing for him.
“He hasn’t had too many opportunities to shoot foul shots in the fourth quarter. He makes them in practice, is a high-percentage shooter in practice, so we know he has the touch,” Fisher remarked of his junior wing. “Him going down there late, that’s slightly different than running a pass route,” he quipped of Enterline’s fall exploits as a prolific wideout for the Barons while out on the gridiron comparing it to walking the length of the floor before hoisting a pair of historic free throws. “He knocked them down. We ran our press break, and they didn’t guard him. Sometimes you’re just better off taking that easy pass and trusting your guy to make ‘em.”
And thanks to those late-game free throws along with all 32 minutes encapsulated as a whole together on Wednesday, perhaps one final dose of “Manheim Magic,” albeit of the roundball variety, can come to fruition on Friday night as they so desire when the Barons take to the floor at Manheim Township in the program’s first-ever league final against Hempfield.
Follow LLhoops on Twitter @LLhoops
