If you want to compete in the state basketball playoffs, you better be able to guard. And this year, Josh Bucher and the Cedar Crest boys’ basketball went as far as their defense could take them.

Bucher was the finest defender on a Falcon team stacked with tough defenders. When it came to doling out assignments, the junior guard always drew the opponent’s top offensive threat.

On Wednesday night at Coatesville High School, it seemed ironic and somehow fitting that the most successful boys’ basketball season in Cedar Crest history came to an end with a 49-43 overtime loss to LaSalle College, despite the fact that Bucher’s Falcons turned in one of their stingiest defensive efforts of the year. Bucher’s hard nose was stuck right in the middle of a Cedar Crest defensive effort that, up until the early portions of the fourth quarter, had held the Explorers to 19 points.

Ultimately it was the Falcons’ offense which abandoned them during crunch time, as they ended their season with a sparkling 26-6 mark.

But defense isn’t the only thing that Bucher brought to the table. Bucher, who is also an accomplished footballer, was a heady guard who made good decisions with the ball, got his teammates involved in the offense and led the Falcons in made three-pointers.

– Jeff Falk