If you didn't get a chance to see the William Penn boys' basketball team tear apart the New Oxford defense Friday night in a 101-47 victory, you can get a pretty good idea of what happened by checking out the video above by esteemed YDR/SN photographer/videographer Kate Penn. At the end of the 90-second piece you can see the euphoric reaction from the Bearcats and their fans when Chemin Lambert scored his team's 99th and 100th points of the night.
It's not like William Penn earns anything extra in the standings by reaching 100 points instead of 95 or 90 or even 48, in this case. The win would have counted the same in all of those circumstances. But all you have to do is look at how the gym erupted after Lambert's basket to recognize that there is some greater meaning in reaching triple digits.
Coach Troy Sowers said it wasn't a number he was thinking about, but it remains a testament to his reserves playing hard the entire game.
"I think 100 is just a goal that basketball fans have when they come to a game," Sowers said. "It very rarely happens. I didn't think about it a bit coming into this game... It's just a general basketball term -- you try to score a hundred. I didn't think it was a significant number. My job is to coach the whole game and that's what I owe these kids. I owe my second string -- just like I owe my first string -- to coach them basketball. They work hard and they value their time and that's why we scored a lot of points tonight."
Senior forward Malachi Leonard had a specific team in mind when he talked about the significance of reaching 100.
"We're doing it to let Red Lion know that we're the best team," Leonard said. Red Lion won the Section I regular season title last year over the Bearcats. "We're going for states and we're going for districts. (Red Lion) only beat the team we played today by one point (in a 41-40 win on Tuesday at New Oxford). We beat them by 54, so we're letting everybody know that we're the No. 1 team this year."
Leonard is one of several players who returned from last year's squad that earned a reputation for folding in the fourth quarter. The Bearcats held 18-point leads in games against Dover, West York and York Catholic that they eventually lost. The defeat to the Fighting Irish came in the first round of the YAIAA tournament.
By outscoring the Colonials 28-7 in the fourth quarter on Friday, the Bearcats gave reason to believe things will be different this season.
"I think we're just in exceptional shape right now," Sowers said. "When that third and fourth quarter rolls around, we still feel strong. I think that's going to help us to finish games this year, just the strength that we have. We've really put a lot of effort into our conditioning preseason and during the season. And I'm kind of deep -- we have a deep bench and I'm able to sub as the game goes on so we're kind of fresh in the fourth quarter and my bench plays hard."
Yeah, there sure was a bigger meaning. Like outscoring the opponent by nearly sixty and achieving some meaningless stat instead of showing some dignity in victory. Duh.
Agreed, very bad sportsmanship