Twin Valley Overcomes Early Nerves, Shakes From Northern Lebanon As Raiders Run Away To Score First Win In Difficult Opposing Venue
Written by: Andy Herr on December 8, 2024
(Matt Knight. LLHoops POG In Twin Valley Win Over Northern Lebanon)
If you’ve been following along with the litany of preseason prognostications that have surrounded the start of the 2024-25 Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ basketball season, there isn’t really a reason to be shy nor bullish on the prospects that make up the cast of characters within Section Four most of all.
For starters, there’s a defending District 3 champion in the bunch. That being the Columbia Crimson Tide. There’s of course another District 3 champion from a year ago –one that is a four-time defending champ as a matter of fact – in Lancaster Mennonite. Beyond that, there’s a team that made its deepest run ever in the state tournament a year ago, Lancaster Country Day, a Cougars’ outfit that returns the entire group from last year’s squad back in tow with a few of them likely to find their names on All-State ballots come the end of March. And lest we forget about a program that has won a state title in its own history, Annville-Cleona, and a Dutchmen crew assembled for this year’s ride who feature arguably the best one-two punch in the entire conference in that of Elisa Slabach on the outside and Jon Shay on the inside.
But what do we do with a team like Northern Lebanon?
Granted, the Vikings may not have the recent track record of such successes that those couple of programs can rightfully claim, but the Vikings entry into Section Four this year adds a bit of a wildcard dynamic. Yes, while NL may not garner the same level of attention as perhaps some others in their own division, having the Vikings slip down from the ranks of Section Three while not to mention having the bulk of their roster coming back as well, many of which are talented underclassman who have done a ton of winning in their earlier days growing up while wearing the Northern Lebanon garb, the team from the L-L’s northernmost outpost add a bit of sizzle and spice into this already potent brew.
Now, as far as their start to the season most of all, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag admittedly. Yes, while they weren’t outclassed or sheerly overmatched in their opening game against Schuylkill Haven back on Monday night, that could very well end up being a victory that Northern Lebanon would desperately love to have in their back pocket come District 3 power point cutoff time. But to their credit, the Vikings would then circle the wagons in their next time out in marvelous fashion with a thrilling 54-52 triumph –also on the road—against Upper Dauphin on Wednesday evening following Brady Krall’s buzzer-beater at the horn for what is almost certainly the leader in the clubhouse thus far in terms of the league’s most thrilling of finishes.
So, with a boost in their step and understandably so coming out the game against UDA earlier in the week, Northern Lebanon had the opportunity to finally come home and kick off their slate in the friendly confines against a squad that didn’t figure to be all that friendly in return.
Ironically, as odd as this early start to the season has made things with teams doing what they pleased in either holding back the reigns or letting it rip by playing games night after night to begin, here was yet another oddity. While Saturday night in Fredericksburg would mark NL’s third game of the year already, their foe on this night, Twin Valley, would only just be starting by comparison’s sake. Similarly however, the Raiders would also be bringing back the lion’s share of their rotation this year as well, much like Northern Lebanon, albeit while embarking on the RJ Proska era, in this his first year in charge of the Twin Valley bench.
Yet new coach or not, late start to the year or not, in some ways it was almost impossible to make that distinction once the dust had finally settled by the end of Saturday night. And if they can only improve upon their performance exerted against Northern Lebanon as the rest of the year rounds into form, Twin Valley could certainly be on those teams in Berks who are a serious and legitimate threat to make life extremely uncomfortable and upset their fellow conference brethren along the way.
On Saturday evening though, perhaps as to be expected with both teams having a boatload of emotions and excitement to work through for a variety of different reasons, the early action that defined this nonconference matchup was a bit of a hodgepodge.
For the good, certainly Northern Lebanon’s Andrew Via getting things off on the right foot as the Vikings’ 5’11 junior guard proceeded to tally four consecutive points to his stat line in the early going to help propel the hosts out to the 5-4 lead with just under half of the opening frame already expired. For the positive in Twin Valley’s direction, a very patient and workmanlike drive to the cup by way of 6’8 senior forward, Riley Gray, awarding the lead back in the Raiders’ favor with 2:40 left to go before the back-and-forth nature of the opening stanza eventually ended with Twin Valley maintaining the slimmest of margins, 8-7.
Even still, new quarter or not, both Northern Lebanon and Twin Valley just could not run seem to run away and hide from one another.
Case in point, while Twin Valley senior big man and Navy football commit, Aris Drake, tallied four straight Raiders’ points gave the green-clad, white-scripted uniformed bunch to their largest lead of the night at the time in the earlier moments of the second period, Northern Lebanon’s big man, Brady Krall, countered back with a smooth turnaround jumper at the top of the key not long afterwards to knot things back up at a 14-14 count with 3:35 left to play in the opening half by that stage.
Yet while perhaps next to impossible to foresee at the time given how close both teams remained to one another up until that point, that would prove to be all the closer Northern Lebanon would remain to their opposition for the remainder of the night.
It started with a dead-eye triple sunk in the corner in front of the Vikings’ bench by Twin Valley 5’8 sophomore marksman, Kieran Proska. It then continued with an old fashioned three-point play compiled by 6’2 senior forward, Matt Knight, after finishing through contact. Lastly, it largely ended with 5’10 junior guard, Carter Schmidt, knocking home a 4-4 streak from the charity stripe in the waning stages. And before Northern Lebanon probably knew what had hit them, they suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a 28-16 deficit at the intermission following the Twin Valley-led blitzkrieg to end the opening session.
Suffice to say, if the Vikings had any desires in trimming this now sizable lead down to size come the start of the second half, they needed their offense to get in gear. Unfortunately for them, an ill-timed field goal drought that spanned nearly an entire quarter’s worth of action continued to keep them behind the 8-ball in trying to chase down Twin Valley. As a result, with the other side unable to fill it up, the Raiders did their best to exacerbate the situation, something best evidenced by a nice curl cut en route to the hoop finished off by Carter Schmidt, making it a 32-16 Raiders’ cushion near the midway point of the third.
Even still, while it may have seemed as if Twin Valley was playing with something more akin to that of a 20-point lead based on feel, Northern Lebanon continued to keep hanging around the henhouse as the third period trudged along.
In fact, following a bucket inside put home by another of the Vikings’ towering big men, 6’4 junior Nolan Lesher, the hosts had made the Raiders’ lead a dozen, 34-22, before a pullup jumper sunk right before the third quarter horn by the Vikings’ leading scorer on the night, Andrew Via, pouring in a team-best 15 to spearhead the Northern Lebanon charge, sliced it down to a 37-26 difference with the final eight minutes getting set to commence.
But unlike the aforementioned Upper Dauphin game they had just played, there would not be a case of Northern Lebanon magic to be found in this one on Saturday night.
And while it was true that everyone wearing a Twin Valley uniform who stepped onto the floor added plenty of positives to the eventual winning effort, it was hard to overlook Matt Knight’s 19-point performance by the end of the night.
And here, from the outset of the fourth, his bucket inside after a nice dish fed to him by way of fellow senior, Evan Johnson, helped to put the Raiders’ collective foot on the gas and never look back. From there, another of the Twin Valley seniors, Evan Myers, got in on the act by spraying in a triple in front of his team’s bench, pushing the Raiders’ cushion back up to 16 within a flash.
Yet in terms of the exclamation mark, that too wouldn’t be difficult to overlook.
After inflicting plenty of damage upon Northern Lebanon when they were able to get out and run in transition on Saturday night, it seemed apropos that the dagger be inserted in that manner as well. For that, seeing Riley Gray sail high above the fray and finish things off with a two-handed dunk was certainly the most dramatic of ways for the Raiders to tally their 49th and 50th points on the evening inside the game’s waning stages. In terms of the final punctuation, that too seemed fitting given how Matt Knight only continued his scintillating performance with yet another field goal with the outcome nothing more than a formality by that juncture.
And once the clock eventually did expire, it was hard not to be impressed with the way in which Twin Valley navigated some of those early jitters and hiccups out the gate before then going on to win by a sizable 15-point margin, 56-41, inside arguably the Lancaster-Lebanon League’s foremost house of horrors for opposing teams.
As for how they did it, as the saying goes, “Defense travels.” RJ Proska was certainly aware of that too afterwards following his team’s triumph.
“We were a little nervous,” the freshly victorious head varsity coach acknowledged candidly following his first win in charge of the Twin Valley program. “But yeah, we’ve been preaching defense, we’ve been preaching intensity, we’ve been preaching effort, we’ve been preaching attention to detail, and that was our challenge to the boys coming into the season to see if they can maintain that the whole way through,” Proska stated before their season tipped off here in Fredericksburg. “They certainly did a great job of that here tonight.”
But this was truly a team effort put forth by Twin Valley. So much so in fact that in terms of the scorebook, everyone wearing a Raiders’ uniform who stepped on the floor and saw meaningful time against Northern Lebanon was able to chip in something, no matter small it may have seemed. That too wasn’t lost on their coach either.
“Togetherness is such a big thing for us,” Proska explained. “When we were looking in the offseason and preparing, we were talking about how deep we could potentially be. Now, what does that mean? Maybe someone has to give up some minutes they had last year or give up your stats for the good of the team to get where our goals are,” he added. “That was important for us to do that and establish that. To the boys’ credit, they’ve been doing that and coming together cohesively as a team, that group of ten, and I think you saw that tonight.”
And it’s not hard to get their “new” coach to stop gushing over this squad he’s been entrusted to lead.
“Man, I love this group,” Proska said flashing a smile. “I’ve been around this group for such a long time. There’s a passion there. I have a history with them from when they were younger. I’ve coached most of these kids or their brothers or siblings, so I’ve watched them grow up,” he continued. “It’s great to just have a spot on this ride with them in this last time out for this core senior group. It’s awesome. Just really awesome to be a part of it.”
One game down, but plenty of “awesome” still yet to take place.
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