The Northampton boys basketball team fell behind Central 14-3 after the first quarter and were never able to fully get back into the game as they fell to the Vikings 42-33 Tuesday night in Pete Schneider Gymnasium.

The K-Kids shot 1 for 9 in the opening period and turned the ball over 3 times while Central knocked down three 3’s over the final 2:57 to break the game open.

A quick 5-point run on a Tyler Kauffman 3-pointer and a Shakim Dunbar steal and coast-to-coast layup got Northampton to within 8 midway through the second quarter, but that was the smallest margin between the teams for the rest of the night.

The Vikings led 26-14 at the half and 37-23 after 3 quarters.

Northampton head coach Matt Scholl assessed his team’s performance.

“We’ve been playing hard every single game. We have to find a way to score,” he said. “If you look at any of our games, you can’t win many high school games scoring in the 30s. The defense is there. The energy is there. We graduated over 90 percent of our scoring.

“It will come. It will come with time. We had a short preseason with only 2 weeks to prepare and with the Thanksgiving Day football game, we got some of our guys back late.”

Tristen Pinnock led Northampton with 8 points in the contest. Dunbar and Jonathan Kolumber had 7 apiece. Brody Graff added 5, Kauffman scored 4, and Parker Christman notched 2 with a team-leading 6 rebounds.

The loss dropped the Kids’ record to 2-3 on the season. Their next home game is Friday against East Stroudsburg North. The Timberwolves have been surprisingly frisky this season and are riding a 2-game winning streak with victories over Stroudsburg and Nazareth. Northampton travels to Bethlehem Catholic to face a 2-2 Golden Hawks’ squad on Tuesday for their final game before Christmas.

A quick note on the girls’ side: Grace Lesko scored 18 points in a 41-35 loss to Central to put her over the 1,000-point career milestone. She is the fourth K-Kids’ female player to eclipse that mark in the last 6 seasons joining Victoria Keenan, Jenna Rogers, and Morgan Sterner.