Lancaster Country Day Bounces Back From Dizzying Cedar Crest Defeat By Handling Dayspring Christian In Opening Round Of District 3-1A Play As Cougars And/Or ‘Lions’ Make Good On Shared ‘Investment’
Written by: Andy Herr on February 22, 2025
Artist’s Apparent Rendering Of Lancaster Country Day’s Boys’ Basketball Program Viewing Itself. (Photo courtesy of Wallpaperflare.com)
Ever since they came into the league, they hadn’t been shy when it came to saying out loud that reaching that stage for what would be the first time in its program history would be a momentous achievement whenever that time ultimately came to pass. The school? Lancaster Country Day. The occasion? Reaching the L-L League tournament. Well, simply put, that maiden voyage will certainly be a trip that probably won’t ever be forgotten.
Coming into the season, the Cougars from Country Day were right to feel bullish on their prospects of reaching the league tourney this year.
Aside from bringing back literally the entirety of last year’s roster that eventually reached the Elite Eight of the PIAA-1A state bracket – two members of which are All-State caliber talents one might rightly argue –, L-L Section Four figured to get level-set somewhat coming into this year with Country Day figuring to be right there to pick up the baton and run with it. As a result, successful jaunt through the regular season and all, the Cougs did indeed get that elusive first-time ticket into the dance before drawing the defending league champ, Cedar Crest, in the process.
A first timer versus a seasoned vet. Section Four versus Section One. 1A versus 6A. This certainly figured to be a case of a fish being out of water, no? Not quite.
Instead of coming into the Falcons’ home confines looking like collective deer in headlights, Country Day would instead not just land the first punch, but score a haymaker, as the Cougars led the defending champs by double digits come the halftime break last Monday night at Cedar Crest in a score that could’ve been registered on Richter scale given the shockwaves it surely set off.
That said, part of the reason as to what will undoubtedly forever make that game as unforgettable as it turned out to be? Surely the Falcons’ second half rebuttal no doubt.
There, after being challenged quite literally by their own student section amongst other paid patrons found within the audibly-uneasy bunch, Cedar Crest responded in kind to the early hole in which they had dug themselves into by promptly rattling a jaw-dropping 59-point second half showing, somehow invoking the mercy-rule into effect while in the process, before things were over and done with in the form of a misleading 76-43 victory over LCD.
Again, hard to dispute how such a seismic and Titanic shift between two halves could ever truly have its memory fall victim to father time.
But the good news for Country Day coming out of that L-L quarterfinal round defeat at the hands of the defending turned subsequent back-to-back league champs hailing from Lebanon County? The fact that the road ahead featured only 1A outfits for them this season as opposed to the stark difference found in that of a 6A behemoth.
And first up in that assignment? A home matchup with Dayspring Christian and a Warriors’ team coming off an emphatic 74-39 triumph in their first-round game against Coventry Christian earlier this week in their own right before drawing a dinner-hour date with Country Day on Friday evening.
Yet even though Lancaster Country Day wouldn’t begin this contest nearly as sultry as their previous game against Cedar Crest, the good news for the Cougars was that end result was equally demonstrative. All the better when you consider that they found themselves on the winning side of the ledger in a game that went so decisively this time around.
Unlike the L-L first round matchup against Cedar Crest, the first quarter heroics found from that of Cam Harris weren’t nearly as plentiful when it came to Country Day’s perspective in this game against Dayspring. In fact, the Cougars’ highlights in general out of the chute were rather lacking seeing as how it took until a Jordan Ashby triple to finally break the scoring seal for the hosts as the Cougars’ 5’11 junior guard knotted things up at 3-apiece following a fearless 3-ball with 4:30 left to play in the opening frame.
In fact, LCD would net only two more points throughout the remainder of the first stanza as Dayspring Christian was able to ride the overwhelmingly friendly crowd who had traveled over from Mountville to support them – along with five Noah Huxta points not to get lost along the way – into a 7-5 advantage come the end of the first quarter on Friday night inside Parent’s Fieldhouse on the Country Day campus.
But unlike the difference found juxtaposed between their first quarter showing against Cedar Crest compared to that of this one against Dayspring, the second quarters in both contests would prove to be equally as voluminous no matter which game you wanted to assess of the pair. And it really wouldn’t take all that long to soon decipher either.
In fact, following a pair of successive offensive ventures down the floor which would culminate in a Chris Dukes jumper before the aforementioned Cam Harris finishing off a nice backdoor cut en route to the hoop immediately afterwards, Country Day had gone to capture their first lead of the contest at 9-7.
From there, speaking of Harris, Country Day’s ongoing revelation of a 6’0 talented sophomore, his take to the rack near the halfway point of the second quarter not just ushered him towards what would result in a 14-point first half showing against this Dayspring Christian outfit, but it more importantly awarded the Cougars their largest lead of the early evening up until that point, 16-13.
Unfortunately for the Warriors, Harris was only just then getting into top gear.
Sure enough, following two more buckets found in back-to-back fashion, his 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th points of the opening half registered until that point, the LCD lead had suddenly swelled out to a commanding 22-13 difference.
And speaking of four straight points, that’s precisely what Dayspring’s Gabe Mellinger brought with him to the party as the Warriors’ 6’2 junior wing netted a pair of buckets in his own right afterwards, this exchange nearly trimming the Country Day lead down to single figures at 30-19 before the first half buzzer would indeed see Dayspring trot into the half with only a nine-point deficit at 30-21.
But that would largely be just about the last instance of Dayspring being able to keep pace with these Cougars for the duration of the early evening.
Truth be told, it took all of two minutes before Country Day was able to push their cushion back upwards and into two numerals as 3-ball connected on from 5’11 junior guard, Kane Kirby, put the Cougs up by two touchdowns, 37-23.
From there, the trifecta remained alive and well for the LCD contingent as a beautiful triple knocked down by Jordan Ashby by way of a gorgeous cross-court feed thrown to him via the oft-mentioned Cam Harris, prompted Dayspring into then burning a timeout while looking up at the current 42-25 margin of separation between themselves and their hosts with 3:25 then left to play in the third.
Later, while a take to the cup courtesy of Country Day 5’10 sophomore guard, Adryan Cruz, made it a 44-27 affair with 80 seconds remaining in the penultimate frame, the book would close on a 14-point Lancaster Country Day third quarter effort which resulted in an apropos difference altogether considering the 44-30 count concerning the game at large prior to entering the final quarter of play.
Yet even here, what felt an eventual formality and all, Country Day continued to display no graciousness whatsoever when it came towards offering their opponent even just the slightest glimmer of hope down the homeward stretch.
In that regard, a trademark triple sunk by Ashby, three more en route to his 16-point night overall, helped to kick off the early fourth period action in making it a 51-32 ballgame. And while Dayspring Christian’s game-high scorer, Noah Huxta, who tossed in a 21-point showing next to his name in the book, threw in a triple that made it a 51-35 game with a shade over four minutes remaining, Ashby would promptly follow suit with another of his own on the ensuing LCD trip down the floor as the Cougars’ underclassman would share in team-high honors alongside Cam Harris come the end of things with both authoring 16-point clips.
And once things did indeed come to a close, there was little doubt that Country Day’s somewhat sluggish start of the gates in this one was little more than a blip on the radar. Not the least of which was helped shown in evidence considering their final 58-40 triumph against a Dayspring Christian outfit that still has a chance to play itself into the PIAA state field starting this coming week.
For Country Day however, this win signified that the Cougars will themselves find their name revealed in the upcoming statewide 1A bracket regardless of what transpires here for the remainder of their District 3 tourney journey. Certainly not a bad consolation prize coming out of last week.
“It just kind of steamrolled on us,” Lancaster Country Day head coach, Jon Shultz, acknowledged postgame on Friday when asked to go back in summing up the Cedar Crest outing. “The other thing was, (Cedar Crest) just didn’t miss any shots….We got caught up on some screens, guys weren’t communicating and being where they were supposed to be necessarily,” he continued. “Some of those shots were open and their guys knocked them down and then they got really hot. They only missed one shot in the whole third quarter,” Shultz mentioned of Cedar Crest’s white-hot display. “It was just one of those games that got away from us. But I couldn’t have been happier with the guys overall in that game. We played really well,” he remarked of his troops. “These guys are really, really coachable and stick to the gameplans of what we want them to do. The stars just didn’t align for us that night. But overall, we left (Cedar Crest) feeling pretty good. We came back the next day and the attitudes were fine. It was a case of like, ‘Okay, let’s go. Let’s get back on the horse and ride.’
“Making the league playoffs was good for us, but we’re not satisfied with that,” said Shultz. “We wanted to win that game. We prepped hard for that game. It just got away from us and Crest really took advantage of that.”
And just like Cedar Crest did to them, so too did Lancaster Country Day then take advantage of Dayspring Christian on Friday night once the door was left ajar for the Cougars all the same.
“We knew this team had two really, really, really good basketball players,” Shultz stated of Dayspring Christian’s Gabe Mellinger and Noah Huxta respectively. “We had a lot of film on them and a lot of scouting on them for what they like to do. Like, I was scouting for Huxta and it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that it’s way more advantageous as an opponent when the ball is not in his hands,” he quipped of the Warriors’ 6’1 sophomore lefty who poured in 21 on this night regardless. “We don’t do a ton of face-guarding as it is, but we face-guarded him and he still gets his shot off.”
“The biggest thing is, these guys just want to keep playing together,” Shultz said of his Country Day crew. “We might’ve been a little bit tight with all of that because last year, as a #2 seed, we lost to High Point, who honestly was way better than the #7 seed that they were,” he added. “We didn’t want to go down that route again (having to play in the District 3-1A consolation bracket), so we’re happy to get this one.”
Yet as is usually the case in these months-long seasons, there are almost always those few players who ascend past their perceived roles that were set forth at the start of the season before then blossoming into a very real and valuable asset to the collective unit as the year gradually progresses. For Lancaster Country Day, they too can enjoy such a luxury. And his name is Cam Harris.
“We know that Chris (Dukes) and Jordan (Ashby) are always going to draw a ton of attention,” said Shultz of his two foremost stars who are on the short list of best backcourt duos within the entire conference. “But we know how good Cam is and all of the good things that he can do for us,” he mentioned of Harris. “Defensively, he can really get after people. He’s just got so much confidence in himself, and he worked on a lot of things during the offseason. For instance, his foul shooting has improved tremendously. His overall shooting percentage, tremendous. Last year was probably a little humbling for him. In a good way,” he continued of his rapidly improving sophomore chess piece. “He’s only just beginning to become the player we all know he can be. He hasn’t even really started scratching the surface just yet…He just plays with so much confidence, and he plays so hard. He’s also unselfish. He’s always looking to get the other guys into scoring position. Even during in timeouts inside the huddles, he’s talking. I just couldn’t be happier with his progression and his development. On both ends of the floor.”
“We have a long to go, but we do have time,” the 7th-year head coach of the league’s smallest program offered of the road ahead. “This win tonight bought us three more games. That’s how we were looking at this one. This was an investment. We’ve spent a lot of time working, let’s buy at least three more games with this. That’s what this is.”
And in true ironic fashion, while Country Day would’ve obviously loved to have shocked the collective local basketball world and finished off that game against Cedar Crest last week, maybe it’s not all bad.
As Shultz mentioned, his team is now state-bound with a guaranteed triumvirate of outings. Meanwhile, that other team, Cedar Crest, has already handed in their uniforms as the Falcons lost their opening round district game, which in turn signified the end of their 2024-25 journey comparatively speaking.
“They want to be relevant in the league and I think they’re there,” Shultz said in closing of his troops’ outlook on a grander scale. “All summer, we play bigger schools here (at Country Day). We go to camp, and we play the bigger schools there. We know what we are, but we don’t act like a small program. It’s almost like we’re that picture of the cat looking in the puddle at his shadow that sees a lion,” he drew in comparison to the famous piece. “That’s who we are, and we feel that way. We’re not afraid to play the big schools. We like that.”
Now, the Lions, er, Cougars, find themselves just two wins away from being named the king of the jungle when it comes to District 3-1A. And considering that the litany of L-L League teams regardless of size that are now sitting idly by with their seasons already having been wrapped up, they too would surely have loved to have made such a sound investment for their portfolios.
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