Warwick Opens Defense Of Lititz Flooring Holiday Tournament Title As Warriors Ride 41-Point Second Half Past Lancaster Catholic, Draw Old Section One Foe Penn Manor In Championship Tilt
Written by: Andy Herr on December 30, 2023
Before we start, we (I) swear this will be the last time this topic is ever brought up moving forward. Here it goes. Last year, one of the oddest factoids in Lancaster-Lebanon League basketball lore was finally put rest once Warwick defeated Dallastown to win their own Christmas for the first time since 2007. Pretty remarkable when you consider that the Warriors have been on hosting duties on a perennial basis while inviting teams in from Berks, the Mid-Penn, and York-Adams conferences respectively. Not only that, but the 2007 tourney was remarkable in that it gave that particular team two of its five wins on the entire season within the span of 24 hours by and large. Not speaking on it like it was anyone’s senior year or anything. No, of course not, right?
Anyway, now that Warwick had finally been able to exercise its own demons if you will in capturing their holiday tourney for the first time in what was fast approaching two decades, the natural course of progression would be to make it back-to-back, yes? For that, before they could reach the grand finale come Saturday night in their home gym, they would first need to go through the other stalwart who had taken a majority of those aforementioned titles out of Lititz with them over the years, Lancaster Catholic.
And in the end on Friday night between these two programs who have more than fair share of history against one another, while the Crusaders would show off that same familiar fighting spirit and scrappiness that is so ingrained in their culture overall, a strong second half surge authored by the hosts would eventually prove to be too much for the purple and gold to try and overcome.
To start things off on Friday night, it looked like an old-fashioned Catholic and Warwick matchup of yesteryear. Case in point, while Ya’Majesty Washington was able to get the party started with a three-point play on the Warriors’ first possession of the contest, Catholic would counter back with a take to the rack by way of senior guard, Leo Lambert, giving the Crusaders the 4-3 advantage with 5:35 left in the opening frame by that point. Later, the see-saw would tilt back in Warwick’s direction once 6’0 senior guard, Mason Burr, splashed home one of the Warriors’ trademark triples to give the lead back to the hosts, 6-5, with just 3:10 left in an opening frame where Lancaster Catholic had so clearly started off as the primary aggressor. In fact, it was so overt that it prompted Warwick into calling a 60-second timeout to reemphasize shall we say the need to get things in gear as the opposition was taking the fight to them inside the initial stages.
From there, the one who seemed to receive the message loud and clear was 6’3 senior wing, Trevor Evans, as Evans proceeded to snare down three offensive rebounds over the course of the ensuing few minutes following the early stoppage which undoubtedly helped get the Warriors back in tip-top shape. Sure enough, on the heels of one of Evans’ rebounds in particular came a floater in the lane by Washington as the 6’3 sophomore wing was able to make it an 8-5 Warwick lead with 2:27 left in the opening period.
That said, as anyone over the years with any sort of historical knowledge of this conference will tell you, expecting Lancaster Catholic to simply roll over for you is at best farfetched, at worst laughable if nothing else. With that in mind, seeing Logan Weyforth bomb in a Crusaders’ trifecta in the waning stages seemed apropos as the senior guard trimmed it to an 11-8 Warwick lead before the Warriors would go on to add one more to their existing cushion over the final 90 seconds as a slugfest opening quarter ended with Warwick owning the 12-8 advantage.
Then, once the second act got underway, Lancaster Catholic just kept pushing the envelope when it came to trying to overtake the lead. In that regard, look no further than a pair of 3-balls sunk by Colton Hegener and Ben Brody respectively over the span of just a few Crusaders’ possessions with Brody’s knotting things up at 14-apeice with 5:30 left to go before the halftime break.
However, from that moment on, Warwick simply took matters into their own hands without much in the way of negotiation.
Case in point, the Warriors steadily and methodically going on an 11-1 salvo over the ensuing three minutes and change of the second quarter with Tyree Hughes capping things off by sinking a triple as the 5’11 senior guard made it a 25-15 Warwick lead with 1:50 left before the recess. And while Catholic would proceed to add a deuce to cut into the existing deficit which made it a 25-17 Warwick lead at the half, it felt as if the hosts were on the verge of breaking this one open once and for all.
They would.
Granted, while it may not have seemed that way considering how Lancaster Catholic’s leading scorer on the night, Crew Wells, would fire in a triple of his own to add three more points to his 19-point evening which cut the Warwick lead down to half a dozen at 28-22 with 5:20 left to go in the third frame, that would be all the closer the Crusaders would get from there on out.
Fittingly, largely buoyed by their propensity at firing flamethrowers in from long range, Warwick proceeded to put this one away thanks to their three-point prowess in the latter stages of the third.
In that regard, a triple sunk by the Warriors’ leading scorer on the night, Ya’Majesty Washington, would tally three more to his 15-point netting, but more importantly made it a 38-25 Warwick lead with 2:30 left in the third. From there, a strong take to the tin by one of the Warriors who it seems as if he is on his 17th year of eligibility at this point, 6’1 senior Carter Horst, made it a 42-25 lead in favor of the hosts which is precisely where things remained once the final 1:14 bled off the third quarter clock.
And speaking of that Warwick three-point shooting expertise, that never was more on display than when the fourth quarter got underway on Friday night.
First and foremost, the other piece of the Horst tandem, Parker Horst, proceeded to follow suit as the 5’10 junior guard got things started with a triple of his own to give Warwick their largest lead of the night at 20, 45-25, inside the early stages of the fourth.
Yet while the Crusaders, namely Crew Wells in this particular instance, would continue to scrap and claw for everything down the stretch even with the outcome seeming to nothing more than an eventual formality at that point, good luck trying to convince the Crusaders’ senior big man of that as his three-point play following a steal got Catholic back inside of that 20-point mark, 49-31, with 5:47 left to play.
That said, seeing the Warriors pepper in even more triples over the final few minutes would formally end any hopes of a potential frantic Catholic comeback.
For those spoils, the loudest ovations of the entire night came once Jonny Royer, a 5’10 senior guard, checked into the contest and buried a trey much to the crowd’s delight. Well, that was of course until Jacob Spade decided to follow suit as the 6’2 junior forward knocked one down in his own right to an equally raucous ovation which would prove to be the final points of the night as Warwick was able to get one step closer at formally trying to defend their own holiday tourney crown following a 41-point second half barrage that resulted in an eventual 66-39 victory over a scrappy Lancaster Catholic bunch in the opening round.
Even still, despite what became a 17-point victory by the end of it all, make no mistake about it. Warwick was forced to dig deep way back at the onset at contest as Lancaster Catholic was the one dictating the terms of engagement.
“We have to come out ready to go from the jump and get ourselves up,” Warwick head coach Chris Christensen admitted in the postgame. “That’s something we have to get better at. The good news is we turned it around this time. Some of our other games, we didn’t. That’s what it looked like,” he continued. “Tonight, it was good to see us not have it, but eventually come back and bring it.”
“We finally have our full lineup back,” the Warriors’ skipper went on to point out regarding some key pieces that were in and out of the rotation over the last couple of weeks. “You want to be playing your best basketball the later you go in the season. The guys in practice have been saying, ‘It’s time to roll.’ Tomorrow night is a test for that.”
Speaking of that Penn Manor club who his team will now see, a group that saw the very casual reintegration of Ethan Benne in the form of flirting with a 30-point game back into the lineup on Friday against Dallastown following a pesky hand injury that kept out of the Comets’ lineup the last couple of games? Well, let’s say that the Comets have Christensen’s full attention and then some.
“Yeah, (Penn Manor) is good and Benne is really good,” said Christensen without any sort of hesitation. “We’re not going to stop him, but we’re certainly going to try and slow him down. Put it that way,” he added of the future Millersville Marauder. “Larry (Bellew) does such a great job. They’re so well-coached and they run great stuff,” he added of his coaching counterpart. “Tonight’s first quarter in not coming out ready to go, that’s not going to work. That’s why we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
And while Saturday night comes with all the trimmings of a championship behind it, while Warwick would certainly be happy to take it, this upcoming test against Penn Manor is far more fruitful in that it pits them against another team who figures to be one of the L-L League’s strongest this season, particularly with Benne back in the fold most certainly.
“It’s a regular season game that has a little more oomph to it,” said Christensen matter of factly. “It’s probably more like a playoff atmosphere, but it’s not an elimination game or anything like that. It’s a regular season game with a little bit more behind it.”
More importantly though, even putting the obvious of basketball element aside for just a moment, this game, this whole tournament quite honestly, has a bigger and more important meaning behind it.
For those who may have noticed and will notice should they go back to Warwick on Saturday night will see that the Warriors’ players and coaches alike are wearing t-shirts that say “One family. One fight.” The message is simple, but it carries a whole lot more than just two short sentences.
This year, Lancaster Catholic is without the services one of the best in the entire profession, head coach Joe Klazas, as he watches this season away from the head coaching chair on the Crusaders’ bench to take time to focus on a far more important opponent who needs his full attention. Trouble is, as anyone of his coaching brethren will attest to, this opponent has absolutely no idea what –or who– it’s up against in giving Klazas an entire year to devise a gameplan against it. And for someone who grew up playing in the league, now coaching in the league against the likes Klazas, creating t-shirts as a symbol to know he’s not alone in this fight was an absolute layup.
“I’ve known Coach Klazas my whole life pretty much. My basketball life anyway,” Christensen said. “One of our first open gyms when I got the job here at Warwick was at Catholic and (Klazas) came over and just said, ‘This is your guy,’ to our players who didn’t really know me from anybody at that time. I’ve always had a soft spot for things like that. He didn’t have to do that… He’s a Lititz guy too. He lives here. Jack (Klazas) came up through our program and now plays for Catholic,” he added. “Lots of guys on our teams and their families are close with each other. It’s a tough situation, but we just want to be here for him and let him know that we’re all behind him and supporting him.”
A simple yet all too important gesture that gives evidence as to why all the young men competing in the Lancaster-Lebanon League are fortunate enough to led by so many upstanding men of character.
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