If there was a sliver of doubt about how good Panther Valley’s boys’ basketball team is or can be, there will be more faith after watching its latest outing Thursday evening at rival Marian Catholic.

Playing flawless, shooting deftly and doing the little things that make good teams better, the Panthers were near perfect in their more-than-impressive 87-64 tattooing over the Colts en route to improving their record to 7-1 on the young season.

This might be the best start in a few decades for the program, and the way this team can shake-rattle-and-roll, there’s bound to be more excitement as the season hits the January freeze.

Reasons 1, 2 and 3 for the excitement are Trey Turner, Renee Figueroa and take your pick at the others — Eric Machorro, Brandon Stilitino, Bradly Buzzard or Blake White. It doesn’t matter whose name you call out, Panther Valley has a host of quality players.

The Turner and Figueroa show was magnificent on this occasion. They equaled the total output by the Colts (4-4), each scoring 32 points. Perhaps the only thing that doesn’t show up in the box score was the second and third efforts.

“I’ll tell you they’re the real deal,” said PV head coach Pat Crampsie of Figueroa and Turner. “They’re out their dishing, looking to make everyone better. Our players as a whole are very unselfish. They look to feed off one another.”

The only time this game looked competitive was with 2:55 to play in the opening quarter. Marian’s Dante Agosti let loose a triple making it an 11-7 score. Figueroa, who had eight three-pointers in the win, answered with three long-range buckets and Stilitino dumped in a deuce. When the klaxon sounded ending the first quarter, Panther Valley was starting to suffocate the Colts, 22-11.

“Obviously, they are a real quality team that wants to run up and down the floor,” said Marian mentor John Patton. “There were parts of the first half where I thought we did a good job and cut the lead to seven at one point, but you can’t hold them down. They’ve got kids that can score.”

Patton was making a point about his team being able to slice into the lead right at the onset of the second quarter. Agosti and Brandon Sabulsky each had a flicker of Marian hope with two straight buckets to make it 22-15 at the 7:22 mark.

But the Panthers took a clawing to their foe and made six straight fouls after being fouled on missed treys. Then with 2:24 to go in the half, Turner came up smoking hot. He nailed four of his five triples to close the rally, juicing his team to an impressive 50-30 lead.

“That was a tremendous piece of shooting by Trey,” said Crampsie. “We closed with that great run and that just made us feel so much more confident. Trey has been great in the past several games. He really got a shot of confidence with the winning (shot) over North Schuylkill and ever since then he’s been lights out for us.”

As much as the offense was at the forefront, the Panthers were also impressive at the defensive end. The game plan was to limit superstar Tyler Fritz as much as possible. The junior sharpshooter was hounded end-to-end by a pair of PV defenders in Collin Eidle and Blake White.

“They both did a fantastic job of playing it straight and not allowing (Fritz) to get to the free throw line,” said Crampsie. “We tell them (all) to go out and play their tails off and do a great job. That’s all we can ask for.”

LOST IN THE SHUFFLE

… Marian had some offensive potency, led by Ritsick’s 16 points, adding 15 points was Agosti and Sabulsky finished with 14.

PANTHER VALLEY

T. Turner 12-0-0-32, Figueroa 11-5-7-32, Machorro 5-0-0-11, Stilitino 1-3-5-6,White 2-0-0-4, E. Turner 1-0-0-2, Eidle 0-0-0-0, Kraft 0-0-0-0, Miller 0-0-0-0, Hoben 0-0-0-0, Brettle 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 22-8-12-87.

MARIAN

Ritsick 5-2-2-16, Agosti 6-0-0-15, Sabulsky 6-2-4-14, T. Fritz 3-2-2-8, McCall 1-3-4-5, Cerullo 1-1-2-3, Latoff 1-0-0-3, Malarkey 0-0-0-0, L. Fritz 0-0-0-0, Grutza 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 22-10-14-64.

Panther Vy. 22 28 20 17 - 87

Marian 11 19 21 13 - 64

Three-pointers: PV-Figueroa 5, T. Turner 8, Machorro 1, Stilitino 1. M-Ritsick 4, Agosti 3, Latoff 1.