Carlisle junior Andrew Goodpaster was a little anxious prior to his team’s opening tip at Middletown Christian on Tuesday night.

Then, the Eagles did a special tribute as part of a fundraising effort to help Carlisle football player Zack Richards’ battle with leukemia. Part of the tribute included Richards on the phone from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he is undergoing treatment.

“That was a real special moment,” Goodpaster said after scoring 30 points in guiding the Indians past Middletown Christian 74-61 to improve to 2-0. “It makes you realize the real pressure is not on us, there are bigger things people are dealing with. It put things in perspective and let us just go play.”

Carlisle really took the pressure off in the third quarter.

After leading just 29-27 at the break, the Indians opened the third quarter with a 26-2 run to push the lead to 55-29 after a three-point play by Goodpaster. Goodpaster had 14 third-quarter points before Middletown Christian’s Josh Hall (23 points) drained one of his five 3-pointers to end the run.

“That run, for us, started on the defensive end,” Carlisle coach Jeff Waugh said. “We transferred it to the offensive end. But, that was big for us; our shots started to fall.”

The Eagles were able to cut the deficit to 13 with 2:11 left in the game on another trey by Hall, but the Eagles (1-2) could get no closer.

“It (surviving those runs) is easier when you have a lead like that,” Goodpaster said. “We just stayed with the game plan and didn’t play to the pace they wanted to play.”

Middletown Christian led 14-9 after the first quarter behind five of KC Karmentz’s 21 points, but the Indians came back to take a two-point lead at the break before busting loose in the third quarter.

“We just came out more focused in the second half,” Carlisle sophomore Braden Liengh said after registering 16 points and 21 rebounds. “We missed a lot of easy shots in the first half, and we knew we just had to come out and play the way we can in the second half.”