In a game that was played for seeding purposes, the Greyhounds held New Oxford leading scorer John Wessel scoreless for the first quarter and only trailed 11-8. Fortunately for the Colonels, once Wessel got started, New Oxford had the game well in hand. New Oxford garnered the 9th seed with a 56-38 victory at Mechanicsburg High School Wednesday night.

Shippensburg led early 8-2 but the Colonels amped up the defensive pressure and the Greyhounds didn’t respond well. A 25-2 run gave the Colonels  a 27-13 lead at the half. Wessel hit a 3-pointer with 1:52 left in the half for his first points.

“We had several walks and turnovers and we didn’t take good shots when we had the ball,” Greyhound coach Ray Staver said. “We held a good offensive team to 27 points in the half and 56 overall. We had some positive steps tonight and we just need to continue to work on our shooting and cut the turnovers.”

Shippensburg cut the deficit to six points at 36-30 on a three by Adam Houser and a Crater Van Scyoc bucket. Moments later, Wessel hit bucket and a three and another three by Cameron Krebbs extended the Colonel lead to 44-30. Back to back treys by Deriq Brown gave the Colonels a 50-36 lead in the fourth quarter.

Van Scyoc tallied 17 and Collin Taylor added six to the Greyhound cause.

Brown led the Colonels with 16 and Wessel added 14. Abdul Janneh only tallied five points but added nine rebounds for the Colonels.

Shippensburg will travel to the Philadelphia area next Friday night against the winner of District 1 in the opening round of the PIAA Class 5A tournament. This will be the Greyhounds third trip to the PIAA tourney in the Ray Staver era. The last time was the 1990-91 team.