Elizabethtown College's advance scout, of all people, gets an assist in the Blue Jays' 84-68 defeat of Messiah in men's basketball Saturday.
And not in the way you'd expect.
The scout, former Central Dauphin High School coach Marty Hasenfuss, told E-town head coach Bob Schlosser that Messiah plays harder than anyone he's seen all year.
"Marty does a great job for us, but I had to disagree with him about that," Schlosser said.
"I know for sure he's seen us play."
The point being, of course, that playing hard is what the Jays are about.
Energy could have been an issue Saturday. The Jays were coming off a gut-punch, one-point loss to Lycoming on the road Tuesday.
And starting forward Mike Church showed up very ill Saturday, clearly not able to go, with the dreaded flulike symptoms.
And Church wasn't the only Jay a bit under the weather, or nursing a tender ankle, or ... .
"I didn't want to hear it," Schlosser said. "I'm not feeling great, either."
Hasenfuss' suggestion that E-town would have to "match Messiah's intensity," unsurprisingly, didn't sit well.
"As far as I'm concerned, they're gonna have to match ours," Schlosser said.
They didn't. E-town (14-2) acted as if it needed this one, which it did, lest it go 0-2 in the Commonwealth Conference and, in effect, nullify the last three months.
The Jays flew around, dove on the floor, four of them at one point nearly trampling a Messiah player in a rush to help a teammate off the floor after drawing a charge.
Schlosser seemed as fiery and demonstrative as he ever has.
"Sometimes you get a little tired of sitting on your hands," he said.
Still, this wasn't smooth and easy.
E-town is an unusual defensive club in that it almost always switches on screens and helps on the ball very aggressively. You'd think once in a while opponents would sneak under the churn for cheapies, but that never seems to happen.
Or didn't, until Saturday. Messiah (12-5, 1-1) kept getting layups, and uncontested ones, out of simple half-court stuff.
"I don't know why," Schlosser said. "I'll have to look at the film."
The good news for E-town is if the Falcons hadn't gotten the easy ones, they would have had a hard time scoring at all.
And as usual, overall, the Jays play at a pace, and at a skill level, few D-3 teams can match.
E-town led 6-0. Then Messiah led 14-8 as the Jays shot poorly, really for the only time all day. As the game wore on it became clear that Messiah didn't have an answer for E-town's variety of weapons.
Thirteen Jays got their feet wet before halftime. Nine of them scored, and Mike Schatzmann's wild jumper, off the glass after slicing through traffic, gave his team a 38-25 lead at the buzzer.
The Jays' defensive leaks kept it from ever being a blowout. Messiah pulled within 59-54, on a John Boyd 3-pointer, with 10:20 left.
But Schlosser settled largely on a zone at about this point, and in it his troops were able to mostly keep the Falcons in front of them. Messiah scored just six points over the next nine minutes and E-town pulled away.
Schatzmann finished with 22 points, or essentially his average. Chad Piersol added 16 and Bryce Rogers 14.
Offensive efficiency won it for the Jays; they shot 56 percent from the field (30-of-54) and had just 10 turnovers.
Efficiency and energy, of course. Schlosser was still at it after the issue was decided, loudly, and surprisingly, dressing down one of his troops on the bench in the game's final minute.
"My wife got mad at me for that," he said. "I don't usually do it but, hey, it is what it is. I'm trying to send a message."
Mike Gross is a Sunday News sports writer. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
