No tragedy here Saturday night, for Elizabethtown College's men's basketball team.
Just reality.
It's going to be tougher from here on out.
The Blue Jays are no longer undefeated after an 80-74 loss to York College in the championship game of the Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament at Charles Wolf Gymnasium.
E-town (10-1) all-but pleasure-cruised through the pre-holiday portion of the Division III schedule. But their frenetic style doesn't work when shots, especially 3-point shots, aren't going in. The Jays shot 38 percent from the field, but it's worse than that: 14-of-41 in the second half, 6-of-22 from the three-point arc, and 10-of-17 from the foul line.
"Sometimes it comes down to something simple,'' E-town coach Bob Schlosser said afterward. "We just didn't put the ball in the basket.
"If we had lost to a weak team or didn't come up with an effort, then I would be really upset.''
York isn't a weak team. The Spartans are surely better than their 8-4 record. They were an NCAA Final Four team as recently as 2005, and they feature a first-team All-American is 6-7 banger Chad McGowan.
McGowan scored 21 and had 13 rebounds, but he didn't go crazy, and he wasn't the problem.
York seemed to have a good defensive handle of E-town's flex offense in the halfcourt, and their Jays weren't able to score enough to get their press-and-run game going until it was too late.
"They probably have more weapons than we do,'' Schlosser said. "We tried to speed the game up, and eventually we did, but again, we missed shots.''
The game was tied at halftime, McGowan had scored just 8 points and E-town had outrebounded the bigger Spartans 24-15. As poorly as the team played, E-town seemed in position to right the ship.
Didn't happen. Second-half rebounding was 34-20 for York. The Spartans came up with a decisive 9-2 flurry with about 10 minutes left, to go from up 50-46 to up 57-48. E-town battled mightily, but York never really lost control after that.
The truth is E-town might have played worse Friday, when it struggled past Johns Hopkins, 74-67, in a first-round game. The Blue Jays are fighting a bit to find their post-vacation legs.
"We came back Sunday [Dec. 30], and we had real good practices; we worked them hard,'' Schlosser said.
"But even last night it was obvious we weren't the same team we were Dec. 15.''
York got a crucial 16 points and 12 rebounds, both career highs, from reserve forward Jeremy Keefer, a Palmyra graduate.
Mike Schatzman led E-town with 23 points and was named to the all-tournament team. Chad Piersol added 17 points and 12 rebounds.
Joining Schatzman and MVP McGowan on the all-tournament team were York's Levi Winters (12 points and six boards Saturday), Joe Manzo of Eastern and Pat O'Connell of Hopkins.
The Centennial Conference schedule looms, where E-town's prime competition figures to come from once-beaten Widener, Albright and Lycoming.
"Stuff like this gets you ready for those games,'' Schlosser said.
He's a glass half-full guy.
"It was a nice Saturday in January, a good tournament at a nice facility,'' he said. "We went toe-to-toe with a good team. We're going to be in a lot of games like this. The only bad thing was we got the L instead of the W.''
Mike Gross is a Sunday News sports writer. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
