Harrisburg 69 McCaskey 58

In the battle of District 3, the Harrisburg Cougars had the upper hand for most of the evening. Strange happenings in the Arena as the cops searched for ???? from the press corp. LLHoops.com had its camera bag searched, with all the pockets opened and closed. WGAL paid to have the game televised locally, which in turn caused TV timeouts and a longer halftime. One sign- in person has NC Basketball as its organization. Matt Dougherty I did not see;)

Both teams came out in full court man presses.McCaskey started out ok leading 6-2, but then the Cougars started slashing through the press causing numerous lay-ups and fouls by McCaskey. Harrisburg's fine guard, Alfonso Burnett, had 6 in the quarter as did 6'5" Camar Hall to lead Harrisburg to a 18-13 advantage after one.

Harrisburg settled back into a nice match-up man/zone on the half court def. in the second period. This caused some grief for McCaskey as the Tornado got called for 4 charges in the first half. Perry Patterson would get by the first wave of defenders only to have a back line guy come up and challenge the shot or try to draw a charge. McCaskey got into early foul trouble as Patterson and Dustin Salisbery picked up charging fouls. The Tornado switched its defense to a 1-3-1 half court kind of trap. Harrisburg had trouble with this as they turned the ball over 8 times in the second quarter. With Patterson and Salisbery leading the way, McCaskey cut the lead to 2 at 30-28 at half. However, the key play of the game might have occurred as PP turned his ankle on the last play of the half on a nice assist.

The third quarter started out well for the Tornado. McCaskey posted Salisbery and he scored 5 in a row to put McCaskey up 33-30. This was at the 6:50 mark of the quarter. McCaskey switched its defense to a 3-2 zone, which seemed to keep the cougars off balance early. Then, Harrisburg took off. A triple by Burnett, and multiple drives to the basket led to easy buckets for Harrisburg. The Burg ended the quarter on a 13-0 run. 46-37 after three. The onslaught would continue. Harrisburg got the score up to 57-39 before the Tornado stop the bleeding (gushing). McCaskey cut it to 9 with 1:05 left in the game, but basically it was over when Harrisburg took off between the 3rd and 4th quarters.

The Cougars played some 3-2 and some 1-3-1 to try to force McCaskey to the perimeter. This was very affective as McCaskey could not answer the points being scored by the Cougars.

So...did Harrisburg beat the Tornado because it was deeper, or did the ankle thing to Perry Patterson limit his contributions in the second half (4 points very late in the game, or was McCaskey off due to Harrisburg defense, or did the better team win? As is always the case, probably a little bit of everything.

Good luck to the Cougars in the finals. Thanks for a great season from the Tornado.

Points:

Harrisburg

Alfonso Burnett 19

Camar Hall 14

McCaskey

Perry Patterson 12

Dustin Salisbery 25

Off the wall....Attendance 4648 paid. Thanks to all local writers who shared info with LLHoops during the playoffs.

~Dell Jackson and Mike Wildisin