LL Column

1/17/08

Crossover…Most of the cross over games are completed. Section 1 vs. Section 2 totals are 26-10 in favor of Section 1…Section 3 vs. Section 4 is 9-26 (we still have not played PV vs. ELCO) in favor of Section 4..The numbers indicate and show that Section 1 is stronger than 2, but Section 2 did a bit better than they did last year. Section 4, with dominant teams, Lancaster Cath. And Columbia put a whipping on Section 3 this season. With the split crossover games it was difficult to tell who was top in the sections. For example Cocalico jumped out early but came back to the pack when they had to play CCrest and McCaskey in the second round. TWP also beat them so they wound up with 3 losses in the second round of cross over games. CV on the other hand beat PM and Warwick, while losing to Hempfield. 

PV…PV is hanging in there after suffering a death of a student last week. They will play ELCO this Sat. to make up the postponed games that they had earlier in the schedule. I always stop and think about how important life is and how our game is just a game with life experiences thrown in. These situations always help me put into perspective about playing time, scoring avg, coaching strategies and parent complaint.

LL observations…Columbia is hot but Lancaster Cath. won’t go away. Both the Tide and Crusaders went through crossovers games without a loss.  …CCrest has a tough week with 3 games. They played Cocalico on the road Tues. Then they have PM Friday followed by a rivalry game with the Section 3 leading Lebanon Cedars on Sat…Hempfield just wins. Nothing flashy about this group of Knights. They can play slow (40-31 win vs. PM) or can score points (72-52 win over Solanco on the road). A great race shaping up between the Knights and Crest for the second slot in section 1…. McCaskey, in my humble opinion, has shown the most improvement from the beginning of the season. A new mix of kids has helped, but Coach Powell has defined roles and players have been all and all focused. Section 1 games will help with that.

Districts..soon here...We posted a link to 4A rankings on main page. Great stuff. The Harrisburg Patriot has rankings in every weekend. Hopefully some LL teams will earn seeds and have a good run in the districts and onto the states.

Rankings..Got to love Jerry Shenks covering of the District and State rankings. Dave Porter sends us some State stuff too.

Beats…Sorry to say we could not get a York Beat writer this year..We still might have a report from Reading as we get closer to the playoffs…Midd Penn ?  Maybe something down the stretch..I guess the pay is not attracting top writers…Neast Beat is going strong however. This year we archived the old columns. Excellent info and standings by our long time friend and columnist Jon K…. Delaware Beat is going strong too. Curtis Watkins sends us new rankings every week.

Blog me..I get some emails about girl’s hoops. Check out Jeff R’s blog. Our long time Columbia expert, Barry Ford, has started his own. Mike Gross has one too. guess the writers write J.

LL playoffs..Finally the LL has decided to play the girls and boys on different dates. The girls will play M, W, F and the boys will play T, TH , Sat. Look for the finals to be at TWP this year. Nothing official but some well placed rumors.

Top pages…thanks to Tom Boyd for bailing us out with our stats page. It became painfully obvious that I could not keep up with everything. I’m sure I messed them up a bunch. We will try to update weekly. Thanks to fans who politely corrected some our mistakes.

Sponsorship…As always we are tight. Anyone who would like to sponsor a page, please email us. One day we will be gone due to lack of funds. Thanks to all those who do support us.

300…. Coach Powell from McCaskey will be going for win number 300 vs. Hempfield Friday night.—like we need more hype for this game. Thanks to Jerry Shenk for alerting us about this. I know Coach Powell has a few wins vs. Coach Jackson back in the day. A pre congratulations to Coach Powell when he gets number 300. Coach Goodling has over 400 going against a 300-win guy. How about that for coaching LL legends? !

Dell Jackson