Slow Start Costly as ‘Cats Fall to Lewisburg, 46-38

AdminFebruary 1, 2019Last Updated: February 1, 2019

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BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – The roller coaster ride continued with the Central Mountain boys’ basketball team as they fell behind early in their loss to visiting Lewisburg Friday night.

It took 4:25 of game time for the Wildcats to get on the board in the first quarter and were trailing 12-4 to the Dragons heading into the second quarter. Central Mountain rebounded offensively in the second period by outscoring Lewisburg 14-12 but were still trailing 24-18 at the break.

Central Mountain opened up the second half on a downward lope of the coaster ride with Lewisburg outpacing the Wildcats 12-7 in the third quarter for a 36-25 Dragon lead with 8 minutes remaining in the game.

In the fourth quarter, CM managed to return to an upward climb with a 13-10 effort in the final period but it was too little too late rendering the 46-38 loss.

While the Wildcats had plenty of fight in the game they suffered from inconsistency in shooting from the field with a 14 of 50 effort though they did fare better with a 9 of 16 effort from the penalty stripe.

“There has to be emotional energy for the basketball stuff to start clicking,” said CM head coach, Tyler Bardo, “We lost that game by 8 point. If you were watching the game, you would have though it would have been far more than that. If we would have brought more energy, been there more mentally, I think we could have come out on the other side of that tonight. The layups we missed tonight indicates a lack of focus,” Bardo explained,

Only four ‘Cats recorded points in the scorebook for Central Mountain with Collin Jones dropping in 19 points and snared 11 rebounds. Zane Probst was next with 13 points and 7 boards. Tanner Lavelle had 4 points and Conner Soo scored 2.

The loss takes Central Mountain to 4-12 overall, 4-6 in PHAC play.

The Wildcats won’t have long to heal their wounds as they will host Selinsgrove, tomorrow Saturday, Feb. 2. 2019.

Central Mountain picked up a 49-44 win against the Seals back on Jan. 8.

“Obviously we know we can win that game, I fully expect our energy, our discipline, wherever we are mentally, we’ll see what we get,” Bardo said of the second cycle meeting with Selinsgrove on Saturday.