PLANO — No one in the gymnasium at Plano High School Friday for the Seneca-Newark game was surprised that it was a defensive struggle.

What was surprising was that the Fighting Irish allowed 22 of Newark’s 36 total points during a third quarter lapse that saw what had grown to a 19-10 Seneca lead early in the third quarter turn into a 32-26 Norsemen lead heading into the fourth quarter. Newark outscored the Irish 22-9 in the third stanza.

“That’s two … no, really three games in a row that we’ve allowed sizeable third-quarter leads to get away from us,” said Seneca coach Russell Witte. “We started settling for bad shots on offense and we allowed our bad decisions on offense to transfer to the defensive end. We were basically panicking out there. We keep telling the kids to stay calm. We definitely need to have better composure when things aren’t going our way.”