RECAP
LEBANON — The Blue Streaks’ streak continues.
Manheim Township won its 59th L-L League game in a row on Thursday night, compliments of a knock-down, drag-em-out 36-32 win at Cedar Crest.
And the Streaks’ latest victory puts Manheim Township in the driver’s seat for a fourth Section 1 championship in a row.
And if the Streaks can win their final five league games in a row, they’d make it four undefeated runs through Section 1 in a row.
Manheim Township improved to 11-0 in the league and to 16-0 overall; Streaks are the only Class AAAA undefeated team in the PIAA, and they pushed their section lead to two games over Cedar Crest (10-2, 13-4).
Alex Leslie scored 13 points, Nicole Files hit a pair of dagger second-half 3-pointers and added 11 points, and Manheim Township fended off the Falcons down the stretch, after Cedar Crest whittled a 9-point deficit down to 2 points with under a minute to play.
Manheim Township was making its debut as a state-ranked team; Streaks came into Thursday No. 10 in the Class AAAA state rankings.
Their two toughest games to date both came against Cedar Crest, which also took Manheim Township to the wire on Dec. 20 before the Streaks emerged 48-44.
DEFENDING THE PERIMETER
Manheim Township’s strategy was pretty simple: Defend the heck out of the 3-point line. After all, Cedar Crest came into the game with 84 treys, tops in Section 1.
Using an aggressive, switching D at the top of the key, the Streaks clogged shooting lanes and forced the Falcons to either make entry passes or shoot into a maze of hands and elbows.
End result: For just the second time this season, Cedar Crest failed to hit a 3-pointer in a game.
The Falcons had five treys in the first meeting at Manheim Township.
While Cedar Crest struggled from deep, Manheim Township sank four 3s; Files hit three and Kaitlyn Van Tash canned a triple in the third quarter.
NUMBERS GAME
Alex Rich led Cedar Crest with 9 points. … Relatively clean game as far as turnovers were concerned. Since both teams went with a patient offense, there weren’t too many turnovers in the open court. The Falcons had 13 turnovers, the Streaks 11. … Manheim Township out-rebounded Cedar Crest 25-22. … Falcons’ bigs Abby Munnion and Alyssa Austin both had three first-half fouls, so Cedar Crest spent a good chunk of the night using a smaller, 5-guard rotation. … Streaks’ largest lead was 9 — 30-21 with 5:55 to go when Files splashed her third and final 3-pointer in the game. Undaunted, the Falcons sliced it to 34-32 with 41.7 seconds showing on a foul shot by Rich. … Trailing 36-32 and with the ball, Cedar Crest turned it over with 8.8 ticks to go and that was that. … Leslie had a game-high 11 rebounds for Manheim Township; Rich plucked 6 boards for the Falcons.