Falcons Stun Blue Jays on Late Three, 61-60

From the E-town College Website:

Box score

GRANTHAM, Pa. --- Tyler Ritzman hit an off-balance three-pointer with 1.2 seconds remaining as Messiah College rallied for a 61-60 victory over Elizabethtown College in Commonwealth Conference men's basketball action Wednesday night at Brubaker Auditorium.

Ritzman's game-winning basket accounted for his only points of the game and the only scoring off the bench all night for the Falcons (12-7 overall, 5-4 Commonwealth), who climbed back into a three-way tie for third place in the conference with the Blue Jays (13-6 overall, 5-4 Commonwealth) and Alvernia University.

Mike Church led Elizabethtown with 19 points and seven rebounds, while Keith Fogel added 14 points and Joe Flanagan contributed 12. Jamie Yoder paced Messiah with a game-high 20 points, while Kyle Snyder registered a double-double with 12 points and a game-high 10 rebounds.

The Falcons trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half and faced a 58-52 deficit following two foul shots by Church with 2:09 left. Yoder cut the margin in half with a three-pointer with 1:38 to go, and Josh Hartman followed with another three with 56 seconds to go to knot the score at 58-58.

The Blue Jays inched ahead by two on foul shots by Church with 45 seconds left and Flanagan with 15 seconds to go, but the Falcons answered for the win as Ritzman picked up a fumbled pass and dropped home the winning shot with 1.2 seconds to play. As a team, Messiah was 5-for-17 from three-point range until connecting on each of its final three attempts from beyond the arc.

The first half featured seven lead changes in the first nine minutes before the Blue Jays jumped ahead 22-14 on a three-pointer by Fogel with 7:17 left in the half. The Blue Jays led by as many as 11 points on two occasions, and went to intermission on top 34-26 as Church led the way with 12 points and five rebounds.

Messiah quickly carved the lead down to a single point at 38-37 with 16:29 to go following a basket by Colton Reitz, and went ahead 41-40 on a three-pointer by Hartman with 14:22 left. With the score tied 45-45 at the 11:44 mark, the Blue Jays reeled off six straight points on a three-point play by Chris Jones and a three-point basket by Fogel to go on top 51-45 with 10:43 remaining. From there, the Blue Jays held a two-possession lead until Yoder's three-pointer brought the Falcons within 58-55 at the 1:38 mark.

Hartman and Chris Yoder each scored nine points for the Falcons while Reitz added eight points and four rebounds. Jones finished with six points and three rebounds in 15 minutes for the Blue Jays, who shot 38.8 percent (19-for-49) overall from the field and 16-for-25 from the foul line.

From the Messiah College Website:

Ritzman Dials Deep For Emotional Win Over Elizabethtown, 61-60
Posted: 2/3/2010

Box Score

Grantham, PA — Junior Tyler Ritzman made one basket Wednesday night.

It may have been the biggest of his life.

The 6-2 guard buried a 22-foot three pointer with just 1.2 seconds remaining in regulation, helping Messiah knock off arch rival Elizabethtown College by a 61-60 score — all in front of a chaotic house of 1,872 frenzied spectators.

Many of those rushed the floor following the Blue Jays’ ensuing inbounds pass, an act that was broken up by seniors Jamie Yoder and Kyle Snyder as the final horn sounded.

“It was quite a scene,” Messiah head coach Rick Van Pelt said of the mad mobbing afterward.

“This couldn’t have happened to a better group of guys. I’m happy for them.”

Happy may not have described Van Pelt’s mood just moments before Ritzman’s cash in, as Messiah (12-7, 5-4) struggled mightily to get on top of E’Town — a squad that led the majority of Wednesday’s clash. After a three-pointer from junior Josh Hartman gave the Falcons a 41-40 lead with 14:22 to play in the contest, Elizabethtown (13-6, 5-4) went on an 11-6 run, taking a 51-45 lead with 10:43 to play.

Messiah wouldn’t sniff a tie score until under a minute remained, as back-to-back threes from Yoder and Hartman turned a 58-52 E’Town lead into a 58-58 deadlock — also turning Brubaker Auditorium into a virtual insane asylum.

As Messiah’s student section went berserk, so did the free throw shooting abilities of the Blue Jays: E’Town’s Mike Church made just one of two and, following a miss from Hartman on Messiah’s next possession, the Blue Jays’ Joe Flanagan did the same.

The result was only a 60-58 lead for E’Town with 15 seconds to play.

Following a rebound from Kyle Snyder on Flanagan’s miss, Van Pelt called a timeout.

“(The ball) ended up in the exact spot we wanted it,” Van Pelt would later say of the play that led to Ritzman’s dagger. “It wasn’t pretty, but the play was run exactly the way it was designed. (Tyler) didn’t have a very clean catch, so it wasn’t a pure jump shot.”

He paused.

“But shooting the basketball is what Tyler Ritzman is good at.”

Yoder inbounded the ball to freshman Chris Yoder from near the midcourt line following the timeout, a pass that an extending E’Town defense forced into the backcourt.

Chris Yoder then got control and appeared to look for Jamie Yoder on the right side, but the Blue Jays’ switching defense took that option away. Instead, he swung the ball to Ritzman on the left wing, as the clock ticked under five seconds.

Ritzman bobbled the pass at first, but then collected the ball, using a swift left-to-right cross over dribble to free himself up for a deep — and contested — three ball.

His shot came directly in front of the Messiah bench, and Van Pelt was directly behind him.

“It looked dead on, but all of Tyler’s shots are dead on,” Van Pelt said. “If he misses, it’s never to the left or right. He’s always on target. If he’s going to miss, it’s going to be short or long.”

Ritzman’s attempt was neither.

The ball splashed through the net with just 1.2 seconds on the clock — a precise moment that produced ear-piercing decibel levels inside Brubaker Auditorium.

It was Ritzman’s first basket of the game, in only his second attempt, after playing just 10 minutes.

Up to that point, Ritzman’s stat line read 0-1 from the field, four fouls and two turnovers.

“Tyler is a pure shooter,” Van Pelt said, dismissing the fact that the Millerstown, Pa. native may not have been ‘feeling it’ on this particular evening. “He’s as good of a shooter as we’ve ever had in our program, and we’ve had some good ones. I mean, in a way, I’m not sure there are any nerves in a shot like that. You either make it or you don’t. It’s not like it’s a free throw, where you have a lot of time to think about it.”

Ritzman’s jumper was a thing of beauty, as Elizabethtown could only call timeout in an effort to set up some type of last-ditch, full-court hook-up for a second miracle.

The Blue Jays succeeded in getting a 90-foot baseball pass to Mike Church, but he caught the ball with his momentum going away from the basket, and could only flip the ball over his head as time expired.

The ensuing scene was one of chaos, as Messiah students rushed the floor, engulfing Ritzman in a sea of white shirts and rally towels.

“It’s kind of funny, but we had a team devotional this week, and we talked about The Book of Esther, and how God placed Esther in the palace for such a time as this,” Van Pelt said, putting emphasis on the main point of the passage. “I guess that tonight was Tyler Ritzman’s time.”

It nearly was not Messiah’s. E’Town opened up an eight-point lead midway through the first half and extended it to 11 points late, a difference that was trimmed to a 34-26 margin at halftime behind a late three pointer from Chris Yoder.

Still, the Blue Jays withstood every Falcons’ push until the bitter end, turning a pair of one-point Messiah leads back to six-point advantages of their own on four different occasions in the second half.

Van Pelt said the difference was in Messiah’s ability to control the glass and limit turnovers in the second period, as the Falcons committed 10 of their 16 giveaways in the first 20 minutes — allowing seven of E’Town’s 10 offensive rebounds during that time as well.

“The first half, they killed us on the boards, they got out in transition and we turned the ball over,” he said. “In the second half, we gave up just three offensive rebounds and turned it over only six times. That limited what they were able to do in transition. It was a tale of two halves, very similar to our first game (this year) at their place. Tonight, we did to them what they were able to do to us.”

E’Town roared back from a 16-point second-half deficit to claim a 69-64 overtime win at Thompson Gymnasium on Dec. 5, a game that sparked a seven-game winning streak for the Blue Jays.

Wednesday night, however, it was Messiah’s turn to end a pair of streaks, snapping a two-game winning push from E’Town while snipping a two-game losing skid of its own.

“We talked to our guys before the game,” Van Pelt said. “If tonight’s game was a beauty contest, toughness would be a category. E’Town plays so hard, they play so tough, they fly around, going to the boards … we needed to win the judges’ scores in the toughness department. I thought we showed just enough.”

Jamie Yoder led all scorers on the evening, finishing with 20 points on five of 12 shooting, going eight for 10 from the charity stripe. Snyder finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds — his fourth double-double of the season — while Hartman and Chris Yoder each finished with nine.

Perhaps the most goosebump-inducing stat — for Messiah fans, anyway — was Ritzman’s line: A meager three points on one of two shooting from the floor.

It was not Ritzman’s first brush with last-second greatness, however, as he canned a baseline jumper with .01 remaining to give the Falcons a 57-55 win over Williamson Trade School in the Messiah/Hampton Inn Invitational back on Dec. 12.

Wednesday’s opponent was not Williamson Trade, and the game certainly had more meaning than an early-season weekend tournament.

With the latest win, Messiah helped create a three-way tie for third in the Commonwealth Conference standings, with second and first place sitting just a game and two away, respectively.

“It’s the same every year,” Van Pelt said of the league standings. “It’s a jumbled, bumbled mess. You can’t really worry about it.”

What Van Pelt and company will worry about next is Alvernia University, as the Falcons will visit the first-year Commonwealth member Saturday afternoon in Reading, Pa. The Crusaders are among those tied with a 5-4 league record, making Saturday’s 3 p.m. tilt yet another high-implication battle.

Not that the Falcons will go to bed tonight thinking about that.

“This was a good one for the guys,” Van Pelt said. “We kind of hit a wall this past week, with the whole Penn State-York game, at Widener Saturday. It happens to a lot of teams. Our guys hadn’t had as much fun over the past week as they’d have liked to. This will get us excited about coming back to practice. It keeps us in the hunt. That’s always exciting.”

From the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era:

Blue Jays shot down by last-second 3-pointer
Elizabethtown falls into fourth with 61-60 loss

Intelligencer JournalLancaster New Era
Feb 04, 2010 00:27 EST

By GORDIE JONES, Correspondent

Shoulders slumped, Elizabethtown coach Bob Schlosser emerged from the visiting locker room in the basement of Messiah's Brubaker Auditorium late Wednesday night.

"Let's go out here," he told a visitor.

And then he walked out a door and into a stairwell, which seemed as good a place as any to ride out the disaster that had just befallen his team.

Falcons reserve guard Tyler Ritzman scored his only basket of the game with 1.2 seconds left — a 3-pointer from deep on the left wing — as Messiah beat the Blue Jays 61-60 in a Commonwealth Conference game.

The result, which provoked Messiah's fans to storm the court, dropped E-town (5-4 league, 13-6 overall) into a fourth-place tie with the Falcons (5-4, 12-7) and Alvernia (5-4, 14-6) — an 82-75 overtime winner over last-place Arcadia Wednesday. Five games remain in the regular season.

Four teams make the league playoffs.

"They just wanted it more than we did," Schlosser said. "That's very disappointing. Now we play the two toughest teams in the conference (Albright and Lycoming). If we play this way, we may not win another game."

The Jays had exactly one field goal in the game's final 10:48, and shot 7-for-20 while being outscored 35-26 in the second half. Still, they led 58-52 with 2:12 to play, after Mike Church (19 points) converted both ends of a 1-and-1.

But then Lancaster Mennonite grad Jamie Yoder nailed a triple with 1:44 left, and teammate Josh Hartman did the same with 59.2 seconds remaining, after two missed free throws by Brian Allport; the Jays clanked five foul shots in the final 4:13.

Church made one with 47.5 seconds left, and Joe Flanagan dropped in another with 17.2 seconds showing, giving E-town a 60-58 advantage.

During a timeout with 10 seconds to play, Messiah coach Rick Van Pelt designed a play for Ritzman. The 6-feet-2 junior had only taken one other shot, which he missed, in 10 foul-plagued minutes. But he came in averaging 7.9 points off the bench, and he had sunk a game-winner against Williamson Trade on Dec. 12.

This time he popped open and teammate Chris Yoder fed him. Ritzman fumbled the ball momentarily, but regained possession and connected over Keith Fogel.

"It was a pretty bad night for me up to that point," Ritzman said. "But I still had a lot of confidence I could make the shot. When Coach draws up plays for you, it gives you confidence.

It's a life lesson: When things get rough, you've got to have faith."

It was a worse night for Schlosser, who saw his team's last-ditch play — Josh Houseal's court-
length inbounds pass to Church — end with Church unable to squeeze off a shot.

"I didn't think we were a team tonight," Schlosser said. "We played as a bunch of individuals.

Every week and a half or two they regress and need a wakeup call. Unfortunately, because it's a wakeup call, that can cost you in the league standings.

"I guess they're immature. As coaches, as adults, you have a hard time accepting that. But when you come right down to it, I guess they're immature."