Pat Crampsie has seen a lot of basketball in his many years as Panther Valley’s head coach.

But on Friday night, he witnessed something for the first time.

Visiting Mahanoy Area put on a shooting display that left fans in awe during a 73-46 Schuylkill League victory that kept the Golden Bears undefeated.

Led by senior standout Jace Yedsena, Mahanoy connected on 13 of 16 three-pointers in the game’s first 14 minutes to build a commanding lead. Yedsena was 7-of-9 from distance during that stretch, while Tanner Zawada made his first four shots from behind the arc.

“I’ll be honest with you, in 25 years of coaching I don’t know if I’ve seen a ... display of shooting like that,” said Crampsie. “I’ll have to look at the film, and we may have had one or two breakdowns early and that happens against these guys, but there were a lot of them that were contested. They were very, very tough shots.

“Once they hit them early, they’re a team of runs and when they get rolling and they get confidence like that, they can do some damage. And they did right off the bat. That was a punch in the gut for sure.”

The two teams traded threes to start the game, but then the Bears went on an 11-0 run highlighted by not only their perimeter shots but also from a thundering dunk by Yedsena, who finished with an impressive 37 points.

After PV stopped the Mahanoy flurry with a driving basket from Brody Breiner, the Division 1 leaders closed the quarter with another burst — this one a 14-0 stretch in which Yedsena hit a pair from long range and Zawada added one.

“When you feel it, you feel it,” said Bears mentor Ted Styka, whose team led 28-5 after the first quarter. “I give them the green light as long as they’re good shots.

“It’s good to get out to a start early because you never know on the road (what’s going to happen). We’ve come out slow on the road before and didn’t start playing good basketball until the fourth quarter, so it’s good to get out to a good start.”

The second frame was more of the same for Mahanoy. After Yedsena missed a three to open the period, the Bears hit on their next six to open up their biggest lead at 49-17.

Despite the huge deficit, the Panthers continued to fight and closed the half with their own run — a 10-0 spurt keyed by Ben Baneravage’s eight points — but PV still trailed by a 51-29 margin.

“I know the score’s not going to indicate it, but I like the way our kids stayed positive and kept fighting,” said Crampsie. “That’s not easy to do. You have a build-up to a big game like this, there’s a lot of excitement, it’s at home, it’s a Friday night, it’s a TV game, so to get punched in the gut early like that it’s hard to keep focused and keep fighting, and I thought we did that.

“I thought offensively in the beginning we were a little tentative, and that was something we stressed coming into this game. We can’t be going east-west, we have to go north-south against these guys. We have to keep the ball moving, and I thought a few times the ball stopped, and when you hold the ball and allow their defense to re-set and ramp up the pressure, they can cause a lot of problems. Once we settled down, I thought we did a better job of that. But obviously at that point it was too late.”

Mahanoy’s shooting came back down to earth in the second half, although Yedsena added a second dunk off a steal and the Bears added four more treys to finish the night with 17.

PV, meanwhile, treated the second half as a preparation for what lies ahead.

“That offensive performance was definitely one for the ages,” said Crampsie. “I guess there’s a first for everything, and that was definitely a first.

“At halftime we said there’s nothing that can prepare us more for our big week than playing 16 minutes of basketball against Mahanoy Area. At that point, we weren’t going to kid ourselves. We knew the situation and we thought we need to work on us. Our mindset was to try and make some good things happen and hopefully that can carry over to practice and into next week.”

KEY STRETCH ... Starting Tuesday, Panther Valley plays three games in four days — all on the road — against Pine Grove, Jim Thorpe and Blue Mountain.

GAME STATS ... Zawada backed up Yedsena with 19 points, 14 of them coming in the first half. PV was led by Danny Wehr’s nine points, which came on a trio of three-pointers.

JV GAME ... The Panthers posted a 41-25 victory in the opener behind 23 points from Chase McArdle.

MAHANOY AREA

Sendatch 2-0-0-5, Mayberry 3-0-0-8, Yedsena 13-3-5-37, Zawada 6-2-2-19, Rhoades 1-0-0-3, Bowman 0-0-0-0, Green 0-0-0-0, Oblas 0-0-0-0, Zilker 0-1-4-1, Gallagher 0-0-0-0, Jackson 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 25-6-11-73.

PANTHER VALLEY

Krynock 1-1-2-3, Fisher 3-0-2-6, Penberth 3-1-1-7, Jones 1-0-0-3, Breiner 3-0-0-6, Neziri 1-0-2-2, Wehr 3-0-0-9, Baneravage 3-0-0-8, Gjoca 0-0-0-0, McArdle 1-0-0-2, Caffery 0-0-0-0, Moyer 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 19-2-7-46.

Mahanoy Area 28 23 12 10 - 73

Panther Valley 5 24 7 10 - 46

Three-pointers: Mahanoy Area - Yedsena 8, Zawada 5, Mayberry 2, Sendatch 1, Rhoades 1; Panther Valley - Wehr 3, Baneravage 2, Jones 1.

Records: Mahanoy Area (16-0; 9-0); Panther Valley (9-6; 3-6).