By Ben Destafan

They’re on the doorstep of consecutive trips to states.

Standing in the way is a scary 13-seed playing with house money.

Fresh off Wednesday’s first-round victory, Greencastle-Antrim’s District 3-AAA title defense heads to Dallastown High School for a girls’ basketball quarterfinal game against fast-rising ELCO today at 6 p.m.

The Raiders were responsible for the most unexpected outcome of the opening round, eliminating No. 4 Susquehannock with a 56-54 upset.

Now, ELCO (16-7) gets a chance to dethrone the team wearing the crown.

Favored as the No. 5 seed, G-A (21-2) certainly boasts its fair share of confidence, having rolled past 12th-seeded Fleetwood 59-34 earlier this week.

At stake is a one of District 3’s seven berths in the PIAA tournament and a spot in the Class AAA semifinals at Hershey’s Giant Center.

Still, as proven champions do, G-A won’t be looking past the task at hand.

“You can’t trust the rankings,” Blue Devil head coach Mike Rhine said. “Them being a 13-seed means nothing. Clearly they’re better than that. They’re coming off a big win and have a lot of momentum. We’re planning on being in for a game.”

Undoubtedly, if a return ticket to states is in the cards, the Blue Devils’ Big Three will be front and center.

Reaching 1,300 career points with Wednesday’s game-high 21, Jenay Faulkner enters as one of the premiere players in the tournament, averaging 20.4 points per game. The Division-I bound junior leads all area scorers with 83 total 3-pointers, headlining G-A’s wealth of talent from beyond the arc.

Hannah Crist and Meghan Hirneisen join Faulkner as a top-tier trio capable of exposing defenses, with Crist averaging 16.7 PPG followed by Hirneisen’s 8.7 a night.

Additionally, Morgan Wagaman is relentless defensively and a solid jump-shooter while the freshmen duo of Ashley True and Madison Sweitzer have continued to progress splitting time inside.

“We’re playing well right now, it’s just a matter of can we get the shots to fall on the road that we do at home,” Rhine said. “We feel good about it, especially since this is the third year in a row we’ve been at Dallastown. If we keep it together, don’t get too high or too low, we like our chances.”

ELCO — a representative of the Lancaster-Lebanon League — relies on its own formidable trio of Chandelle Keller, Taylor Bossert and Ryelle Shuey.

All three posted double figures in Wednesday’s upset, paced by Keller’s 20 points. Bossert followed with 14 and Shuey added 13.

 “They have a really nice point guard who is their primary ball handler and sets up the offense,” Rhine said. “They also have two girls on the inside that work well together. There’s definitely more than just one girl to account for.”

Regardless of today’s result, both G-A and ELCO are assured two more games, with the loser dropping into the consolation bracket and still having the opportunity to qualify for states.