With Season Standing At Early Crossroads, ELCO Answers The Bell With Dominant Second Half Against Donegal As Raiders Parlay ‘Gutsy Effort’ Into Section-Opening Win
Written by: Andy Herr on December 13, 2024
(Josiah Hayes- LLHoops Player of the Game in ELCO win over Donegal)
The calendar tells us it’s December 13th. Maybe it’s still a little early to go and start throwing around the hyperbolic language, especially considering how divisional play hasn’t even started in some instances. Then again, it’s probably just a matter of who you ask.
For both the Donegal Indians and ELCO Raiders, don’t find fault with either side if they felt they needed even the littlest of somethings to go right considering how both arrived south of Myerstown on Thursday night with each sporting shared 1-3 overall marks amongst themselves. Simply put, while you don’t necessarily find comfort –or any adjective of the like – in lining up against a fellow section foe given how they always know your most intimate of secrets, at this point, yes, even in the wee days of December, what to the outside world may seem like a very mundane 1-0 start in league play could just as soon feel like jet fuel a new lease on life for those fortunate enough to capture the feeling. Again, it’s all a matter of who you ask.
And with their backs up against the wall somewhat albeit still early in the year, if their second half performance put forth on Thursday is to serve as any possible precursor, the ELCO Raiders may have found some kind of remedy they can perhaps bottle up and use for the remainder of the 2024-25 campaign.
Then again, second half being the operative phrase there.
That, largely being due to the cold shooting that plagued both Donegal and ELCO in the early going of this divisional curtain-raiser to initiate a bit of a muddier start than either desired, but also because the green-clad guests found themselves owning the sizable 9-2 advantage at the 3:35 mark of the opening period following an old fashioned three-point play compiled by senior wing, Sawyer Floyd.
Steadily though, ELCO became warm to the fight.
With inside of two of minutes left to go in the opening stanza, a tough bucket tallied inside by way of Raiders’ junior forward, Paul Williams, finally quenched ELCO’s minutes-long field goal drought as Williams’ deuce made it a 9-4 affair before a magnificent spinning move en route to the hoop tabulated by fellow junior classmate, Kaden Shultz-Tillison, had quickly chopped Donegal’s earlier cushion down to the smallest of sizes, 11-10, as the hosts were able to close the back half of the first quarter on an 8-2 tear.
In the second, while Donegal would again get out and take hold of a multi-possession lead, ELCO wouldn’t allow their opposition to simply run away and hide.
Sure, while there was another Floyd bucket, this of the pullup jumper variety that made it a 17-12 Indians’ lead with 4:30 left to play in the half, Donegal was in no way shape or form out of dodge.
Certainly not when another of ELCO’s unsung heroes littered throughout the evening, this being senior forward Gavin Bicher in particular, finished off a hoop inside later on in the second period to cut his troops’ deficit down to a much more modest two, 20-18, with two minutes and change before the intermission.
And perhaps nothing seemed more fitting of this contest that had largely evolved into a basketball version of a street fight with both teams searching urgently to find some kind of tangible mojo to take hold of an retain while perhaps not playing their most cleanest of games than with the 22-22 stalemate at the end of the first 16 minutes in this black-and-blue kinda game that only section play seems to consistently offer.
In the second half however, that’s when ELCO, namely Josiah Hayes in particular, took matters in their own hands.
For Hayes, a junior forward who has become a fixture in the Raiders’ rotation the last few years, who can routinely be found making the subtle hustle kind of plays that don’t necessarily score acclaim in the press but are nonetheless striking when you turn on the tape, his performance and imprint on the game against Donegal was far too great to overlook. That’s true whether you possess the game film or not.
Even still, in a game whether neither side was able to garner any type of separation from the other up until that point, perhaps Hayes’ sinking of a trifecta that sliced the existing Donegal lead down to a 30-29 count might’ve seemed rather innocuous. However, that 3-ball would serve as the catalyst to his takeover of things as Hayes’ personal 8-0 salvo near the midway point of the third quarter not only prompted Donegal into burning a timeout to try and stem the tide, but it also gave ELCO their largest lead of the evening at 34-30 and 2:33 outstanding on the third quarter timer.
All told, behind what would eventually culminate in a Josiah Hayes’ 11-point third quarter firestorm, ELCO was able to carry the momentum of he and his fellow teammates’ energy and exploits into the final period while possessing the 39-34 advantage.
Regardless, ELCO wasn’t done dodging Donegal’s punches just yet.
At least certainly not when Indians’ junior southpaw, Joey Williams, knocked down a timely triple in front of his team’s bench for a crucial bucket which made it a 39-38 ELCO lead with 6:20 still to play.
However, that would eventually prove to be all the closer the Indians would be able to get the rest of the way home.
Speaking of hustle plays, Micah Gray’s steal and subsequent layup down on the other end while finishing through contact and ending up on the floor in its aftermath was impossible to overlook, a key moment in the game courtesy of the senior guard which then saw ELCO build their lead up to a 44-39 count and the Raiders’ newly refurbished gym being up for grabs in terms of the crowd’s collective excitement.
From there, ELCO wouldn’t –nor couldn’t—be stopped.
While the Raiders may not have been able to eventually prevail had it not been for the aforementioned body of work put forth by Josiah Hayes, it’s pretty hard to ignore 19 points just the same. For those, Kaden Shultz-Tillison would be bestowed the honors as Shultz-Tillison’s buckets inside the waning stages of the fourth period while en route to those 19 points overall surely felt like daggers. Chief among them, his second trifecta of the quarter, this latest one giving ELCO a double-digit lead at 59-48 with just 2:02 left to play at the time.
All told, for what was once upon a time a one-point affair with six minutes and change left to go, a dramatic about-face would just as quickly ensue as ELCO would proceed to notch a mammoth 17-point victory behind sheer will and sticktoitiveness by the end of the night, something that a Josiah Hayes theft and layup helped to personify in the waning minutes, as the Raiders were able to muscle their way to a commanding 68-51 victory once the dust had finally settled.
As far as one of their primary heroes on the night was concerned, there was nothing that could possibly wipe away his smile which stretched ear-to-ear afterwards.
“I mean, we just play hard every day,” Josiah Hayes would remark inside his team’s victorious locker room on Thursday night when asked about he and his crew were able to take command of this one. “Coach Conners is always talking to us about effort, and we just try to exemplify what he says when we play.”
Stats aside, he too knows that this Raiders’ team is only as good as the sum of its entire parts.
“It helps because everyone on our team does the little things,” Hayes was quick to point out with the praise down roster. “We talk about that stuff all the time. Diving on the ground, boxing out your man, and running the floor.”
As far as his head coach was concerned, his lauding was clearly evident.
“First of all, he’s such a great kid,” Raiders’ coach Brad Conners said without hesitation of Hayes. “He lit a fire under all of us tonight and he came with it,” he added. “He looked different tonight. He looked different today during school. He looked different at practice last night. He wasn’t happy and rightfully so. None of us were,” Conners said of the team’s makeup after coming up shy their last time out against a very game Hamburg bunch.
Speaking of which, while you never want to the term “moral victory” to ever seep into your mind to where it becomes acceptable, sometimes there are just instances where you could not be any prouder of the group of young men you lead, even in times of defeat. For Conners, that happened to come true on Tuesday night inside the northeast corner of Berks County.
“I’ve never been prouder of a group after a loss,” said Conners of his team’s previous outing against Hamburg. “A couple kids were choked up. I get choked up at times, but I’ve never been choked up in December. Before I started to talk to the guys after the game, even I had to catch myself struggling to get the words out with just how gutsy our effort was,” he candidly shared of the raw emotion that came part in parcel with the Raiders’ 70-63 setback versus the Hawks. “We were down 24 (points) at the half. Nothing went right. The seniors went in for the second half and we rode with them the entire way back. We ended up tying the game with 1:45 to go and had two chances, two layups, to take the lead, but then we just ended up running out of gas…. Honestly, I felt like it was living in a Disney movie. It’s just didn’t have the ending.”
Nevertheless, moral still seems exceptionally high in Raiders’ camp.
“Our practices so far have been great. Really good and super competitive,” said Conners of the team’s inner workings now five games into the multi-month ride. “They’re young. Micah (Gray) has the most experience, Jo (Hayes) has some, Kaden (Shultz-Tillison) has a little bit, but we’re young. It’s one of those things where you hope you do enough in the offseason to where you can overcome that when the ball goes up, but we’re still young and figuring it out. The only way out is to go through it.”
As far as Section Three play is concerned, that’s already one positive result right off the bat in ELCO’s favor in terms of going through “it.” And while it may not pass the test of ever becoming a Disney script, sitting at 1-0 on December 13th will sit just fine with them.
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