By Matt Michelone

For the Mirror

Just about everything that could’ve gone wrong during Tuesday night’s Mid-Penn Commonwealth matchup with Central Dauphin did for the Altoona boys basketball team.

The Mountain Lion offense couldn’t keep a Ram offense that was missing one starter in check from the opening tip as they were doubled up, 72-34, at the Altoona Fieldhouse.

“Tonight was not a great effort, and I’ll take the blame,” Altoona coach Doug Pfeffer said. “I am the leader of this program, and the kids just didn’t seem like they came out with the right energy to start, and that starts with me. We played a very talented Central Dauphin team who it’s tough to find a weakness with them. We just didn’t compete tonight.”

Much of that first quarter damage was split up between Wayne Fletcher II and Shakur Starling, who scored 16 of the Rams’ first quarter points as they took a 17-5 lead after the first.

Altoona’s Parker White carried a lot of the Mountain Lion offense as he scored his team’s first bucket on a turnaround jumper and picked up the and-1. He finished with 11 points.

Fletcher II continued that damage with a turnaround jumper of his own as he scored a game-high 28 points, which gave the Rams a 35-15 lead. Starling finished with 17 followed by Richard Chase with 10.

“They didn’t miss many open shots, but they created open shots,” Pfeffer said. “We just didn’t defend well; we didn’t take care of the basketball. There was nothing today that we can take away from it and say we can build on this. This is a game that hopefully it doesn’t repeat itself.”

Central Dauphin coach Wayne Fletcher couldn’t have been happier with the way his team continued to move forward despite missing a starter.

“We had a plan that we were able to stick to,” he said. “We were down one of our starters so we weren’t sure how it was going to go, but our guys stepped up and played a good game. I’m proud of our guys. Everybody picked up that slack of not having Jelani (Easter) here. Whether it was scoring points or getting rebounds, or making hustle plays, everybody did their part.”

He also had the chance to enjoy a proud father moment during the fourth as his son Fletcher II knocked down a 3 to reach the 1,000-point milestone.

“They don’t have a lot of those at our school,” he said. “It’s nice to have someone in our program do that, it’s even nicer to have your son do it.”

Pfeffer believes finding consistency will be key for a turnaround.

“We’ve shown a lot of good moments even though our record doesn’t show it,” he said. “We’ve shown that we can compete for minutes, a quarter at a time. We just haven’t put four quarters together except for our two wins. In our conference, if you don’t put together a solid four quarters, you’re going to lose. It was tough to get anything positive in this one.”

CENTRAL DAUPHIN (72): Fletcher II 12 0-2 28, Starling 8 0-0 17, Chase 3 4-5 10, Roberts 1 1-2 4, Sucheski 0 0-0 0, Davenport 3 2-4 8, Brown 1 0-0 2, Rodriguez 1 0-0 3, Box 0 0-0 0, Shiery 0 0-0 0. Totals — 29 7-13 72.

ALTOONA (34): Wagner 1 0-0 3, Dunkle 1 0-0 2, Lowery 3 1-2 8, White 4 3-3 11, Greaser 0 0-0 0, D. Hicks 0 0-0 0, E. Hicks 3 0-0 7, Pezzi 0 0-0 0, Herr 0 0-2 0, Diventura 0 1-2 1, Simendinger 0 0-0 0. Totals — 13 3-9 34.

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Central Dauphin 17 18 25 12 — 72

Altoona 5 10 16 3 — 34

3-point goals: Central Dauphin 6 (Fletcher II 3, Starling, Roberts, Rodriguez), Altoona 3 (Wagner, E. Hicks, Lowery)

Records: Central Dauphin (10-1), Altoona (2-9).

Officials: Mike Andrews, Curtis Miller, Dave Heim

JV: Central Dauphin, 40-29. High scorers–Rahman, CD, 16; Coldwell, Brazile, Helsel, McCloskey, A, 6.