Jan 21, 2016 By Mike Dudurich for The 3 min read

LATROBE — Albert Gallatin High School boys basketball coach Shea Fleenor had seen this movie before. Didn’t like it much the first time and wasn’t all that enamored the second time.

His Colonials traveled to Latrobe for a Section 1-AAAA match-up against the No. 1-ranked Wildcats Thursday night and got thrashed, 92-59.

“We knew what we were up against coming in here,” Fleenor said. “There’s a reason they’re the No. 1 team in the WPIAL. They’re very good, very talented.”

Not to mention undefeated 9-0 in the section and 17-0 overall.

The home team scored the first 14 points of the game and Albert Gallatin (1-7, 7-9) didn’t score until three minutes were left in the first quarter. David Knox broke the ice for AG, but by then the hole the Colonials had dug for themselves was for too deep and it kept getting deeper and deeper.

They were behind 27-7 after eight minutes, something that Fleenor was not pleased about.

“This is kind of getting to be an epidemic for us,” the coach said. “We’ve gotten off to poor starts several times recently and obviously we can’t be doing that. It looked to me like we were giving them too much respect in that opening quarter. We played them better in the second and third quarters, and then not so well in the fourth.”

They were much more competitive in the second (outscored 23-18) and third (outscoring Latrobe 21-18), but by then it was more about trying to gain some respect.

“I think if we played the whole game like we did those middle two quarters, it would have been a more competitive game,” Fleenor said. “We know what we have to do, we’ve talked about it, but we’re just not getting it done.”

Latrobe two-sport star, Austin Butler, reached a significant milestone 39 seconds into the third quarter when he cashed in an offensive rebound that gave him 1,000 for his career. That’s always a special moment, but it was really special when you consider Butler is just a junior.

“He is a very talented player, very talented,” Fleenor said. “In my mind, he’s a Division I kid.”

The Colonials stayed in the game thanks to a flurry of 3-points shots, eight to be exact.

Junior guard Tavian Mozie led AG in scoring with 22 points, including four bombs. Tanner Kutek added 14.

“We can shoot the ball for sure,” Fleenor said. “Tavian got heated up in the second half. It’s just tough playing against them.”

Butler was the game-high scorer, finishing with 30.

Before Fleenor and his team boarded the bus for the trip home, he harkened back to how his team started.

“We talked about the start before the game and how important it was,” he said. “But, we just weren’t aggressive enough, allowed them to get going right away and you saw what happened. This will sound a little funny, but the final score wasn’t really indicative of how we played.”