Central's season ends with 70-56 loss to Lancaster Catholic

FROM KEITH GROLLER

Lancaster Catholic won the PIAA 3A boys state title in 2003. Don't discount LC's chances of winning it again.

Living up to its 27-1 record, the District 3 champion Crusaders led almost from start to finish in ending Central Catholic's season on Tuesday night at Reading's Geigle Complex with a dominant 70-56 victory.

Lancaster Catholic scored the first six points of the second quarter to open a 19-10 lead, extended the advantage to 31-19 at halftime and led 43-29 late in the third quarter.

CCHS fought back with the first seven points of the final period, and got within five twice -- 44-39 and 46-41 -- but the Crusaders made their last 16 free throws and 18-of-19 at the line overall in the fourth quarter to advance to Friday's state quarterfinals.

Sophomore Devonne Pinkard led Lancaster Catholic with 18 points, while Phil Wenger and Paul Senkowski added 14 and 12, respectively.

The Vikings, who finished 17-10, got 20 points from freshman Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman, including 12 in the inal period.

But CCHS was done in by 18 turnovers over the first three periods and never could stay in sync on offense.

"They were really aggressive and all of their players went for loose balls, had good ballhandling skills and they had good spacing," said CCHS Rich Fatzinger. "I thought they played harder than we did initially and it caught us off guard a little bit.

"In games like this turnovers are going to hurt you, foul shooting is going to hurt you, second-chance points off offensive rebounds are going to hurt you and all of those things happened to us."

At the same time, Fatzinger was proud his team was still playing in the second round of the state tournament.

"When you think about where we were in the middle of January and how we were playing, I don't know if anyone thought we'd be playing in the second round of the state tournament," Fatzinger said. "I remember years ago, if you got to the second rounds of states, you had yourself a wonderful season and I said that to our kids.

"I was also real proud of our seniors. Many of them had to take backseat roles. Many of those kids had played more minutes in their sophomore and junior seasons, but they did what was good for our team. I can't say enough about the senior leadership they provided for us."

The five seniors playing their final games for CCHS included Ray Ocasio, Ted Brochu, Shane McNeely, Kevin McKellick and Jack Sandherr.


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