Many area high school basketball teams have some sort of phrase or saying on their warm-ups of T-shirts. Most of the time it's some sort of played-out sports cliche about hard work or hustle. The Red Lion boys' basketball team got a little creative with theirs this season, as I noticed before Wednesday's 59-48 victory over Dallastown.
They include only two words on the back of the warm-ups, one on top of the other. The above word is DEFENSE is big bold block letters. Directly below it is the word offense, noticeably smaller, probably less than half the size of the first word.
I asked junior Spencer McCreary (above) about the meaning behind the words on the shirt.
"There's always the saying that offense wins games and defense wins championships," McCreary said. "But I think for us it's more so that we're going to smother teams defensively and our defense is going to lead to our offense."
Against the Wildcats, the Lions held the visitors to only 27 points in the first three quarters to average single-digit point totals. Dallastown scored 21 in the fourth quarter, but was too far behind for that to make much of a difference.
Lacking the size and speed of Division I rival William Penn and other top basketball teams in District 3, the Lions need superb to play half-court defense if they expect to contend in district and state play. So far, so good for the Lions, who have opened the season with five straight wins and beat New Oxford last week despite scoring only 41 points.
Last season Red Lion won the YAIAA Section I title, but went 0-2 in the postseason with losses in the YAIAA quarterfinals and the first round of the District 3 Class AAAA tournament. It left them with an impressive overall record of 18-6, but no playoff accolades to show for it.
"We've really stepped up a level," McCreary said. "We've got guys that weren't playing defense that are really just digging in and trying to stop people. We like to play defense. That's what our program is built on."
Red Lion played all sad teams so far this year. no wonder there undefeated.