Eagles play like defending champs, rout Pioneers in District 3 opener
2024 Berks basketball coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
By Mike Drago — MikeDragoSports.com Managing Editor
LAMPETER — The Exeter Eagles were the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing entering the District 3 Class 5A Tournament.
Anyone who thought the Eagles were going to play like a No. 10 seed or get knocked out in the first round simply hasn’t been paying attention.
“We won it last year, so we’re defending champs,” reasoned senior Reece Garvin after a 73-49 opening-round rout of No. 7 Lampeter-Strasburg Monday. “We’re going for it again.”
It’s hard to argue with those sentiments after watching the 10th-seeded Eagles knock down shots and put up more points against the Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 3 champs than any team this season.
They put together a 15-0 run midway through the third quarter to put this one away and set up a rematch against second-seeded Mechanicsburg, a team they beat in the second round of the PIAA Tournament last season.
Seniors Garvin and Kevin Saenz, who scored a game-high 26 points, were starters on the Exeter team that won a district title and reached the PIAA championship game last season. Senior Alex Kelsey and sophomore Aidan Dauble were top-shelf bench guys who helped lift the Eagles to a 27-win season.
They’ve been there, done that. Opening the tournament on the road was no big deal for them. They paid no mind to the seedings spit out by the power rankings.
“We’ve had a lot of up and down this season,” said Saenz, “but we know in our hearts that we can compete with anybody in the state. We’ve been here before and there’s no reason we can’t get back (to the championship).”
If Seanz, named to the All-Berks team earlier in the day, keeping playing like this there’s no reason they can’t. He scored in transition, then hit back-to-back 3-pointers early in the second quarter, to lift Exeter to an 11-point lead.
“We came out, we were hot,” said Garvin, who had eight first-quarter points. “It didn’t seem like they were really ready for us, and we executed our gameplan perfectly.”
When Seanz beat Lampeter’s trap and found Brady Murray on the wing for a 3-pointer Exeter led 30-18 with 3 ½ minutes to go in the first half.
The Pioneers (16-8) took a timeout to talk it over but never figured out a way to slow down Saenz or his teammates.
“That was definitely ‘Showtime’ tonight,” Garvin said of Saenz, who picked up that nickname with his oft-spectacular play during a 2023 playoff run that saw Exeter win eight straight times before running into juggernaut Imhotep Charter.
“I kept telling him: ‘Kev, get downhill, get to the cup’ cause their defense in my opinion wasn’t very good,” Garvin said. “(I said) ‘Attack the weakness, get downhill. You’re a very good finisher, you can attack off the dribble.’ ”
Saenz listened. He made 10-of-15 shots overall, including each of his 3-point attempts.
Overall the Eagles knocked down 9-of-24 shots from beyond the arc. Combine that with their utter domination of the boards, where they beat the Pioneers 40-17, and the fact they had just four first-half turnovers and nine overall and you can see why they turned this game into a rout.
“When we started pulling away in the second (quarter I realized): ‘These guys can’t hang,’ ” Saenz said. “All due respect to them, but we’re on a roll now. We saw a lot of shots go in. Everybody played with confidence, and I’m super-proud of everybody.
“All my teammates being able to shoot the way they do, it opened up everything for me and I know nobody can stay in front of me. I was patient and I got myself whatever I wanted.”
First-year coach Jeff Van Gorder liked the match-up against a smaller Lampeter team that plays at a deliberate pace. The Eagles have had trouble defending bigger post players this season but the Pioneers didn’t offer that threat.
“The way we play is good against what they do,” Van Gorder said. “We play with space. We’re used to going fast. Teams that slow it down and run a bunch of sets (like they do), sometimes seeing a faster tempo throws them off.”
The Eagles did a strong job containing Chase Smucker, the Pioneers’ leading scorer. He can light it up and drop 30 if you’re not careful but the Eagles paid close attention to him. Even after all-division guard Alex Kelsey, their toughest perimeter defender, picked up his third foul a couple minutes into the second quarter, they continued to keep Smucker under wraps.
Sophomore Jayden Ware took over that job for long stretches and helped limit Smucker to 17 points, just below his average, and even more impressively to just 12 shots. Smucker went over 9 ½ minutes during one midgame stretch without a point. By the time he scored his first basket of the second half Exeter was ahead by 22 points.
“When we get stops defensively, and rebounds, we’re gonna be hard to stop,” Van Gorder said..
Garvin, an all-division forward, had a game-high 10 rebounds. Aiden Dauble had 14 points five rebounds and Murray scored 10 points.
The Eagles clinched a return trip to the PIAA Tournament and guaranteed themselves at least three more games with the victory. The loss ended Lampeter-Strasburg’s season.
“That loss last week against Wilson fueled us even more,” Saenz said of the 75-51 Berks quarterfinal loss. “We haven’t played a game in a week, so we were hungry to get back on the court. Knowing that this could potentially be our last game, we gave it our all.”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Final | |
| Exeter | 17 | 18 | 19 | 19 | 73 |
| Lampeter-Strasburg | 10 | 16 | 9 | 14 | 49 |
| Eagles (16-8) | FG | FT | 3s | A | R | Points |
| Kelsey | 2-3 | 4-4 | 0-0 | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| Saenz | 10-15 | 3-5 | 3-3 | 2 | 2 | 26 |
| Garvin | 3-6 | 0-0 | 2-5 | 3 | 10 | 8 |
| Murray | 4-9 | 0-0 | 2-6 | 2 | 2 | 10 |
| Dauble | 5-12 | 3-3 | 1-5 | 1 | 5 | 14 |
| Nester | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Ware | 1-5 | 0-2 | 0-2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Flanders | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Redding | 2-3 | 0-0 | 1-2 | 0 | 4 | 5 |
| Gwitira | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Totals | 27-54 | 10-14 | 9-24 | 13 | 36/40 | 73 |
| Pioneers (16-8) | FG | FT | 3s | A | R | Points |
| Abdi | 7-11 | 5-6 | 2-2 | 1 | 1 | 21 |
| Herr | 1-4 | 2-3 | 0-2 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| Smucker | 6-12 | 2-2 | 3-5 | 0 | 4 | 17 |
| Fluhr | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Glick | 3-12 | 0-0 | 1-4 | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| Hostetter | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| White | 0-2 | 0-0 | 0-1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Wagner | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| King | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Fink | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Messinger | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kouterick | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Zuber | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Nolt | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Book | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jones | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Totals | 17-43 | 9-11 | 6-14 | 4 | 16/17 | 49 |
Turnovers: Exeter 9, Lampeter-Strasburg 11. Team rebounds: Exeter 4, Lampeter-Strasburg 1.
