MERIDIAN — The beauty of a balanced basketball team is this: Success doesn’t hinge on the ups and downs of a single star.

The Mountain View boys learned that lesson firsthand Wednesday night, riding the hot hands of Randall Robinson and Marcus Slocum to a 56-43 victory over Centennial.

Robinson finished with a team-leading 19 points and Slocum chipped in a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds on a night that Mountain View leading scorer Tanner Percifield finished with a single field goal.

“Sometimes when you shoot it doesn’t go in the hole,” Mountain View coach Jon Nettleton said. “We’ve been working for the last month or so on just running our offense better, and there’s glimmers of when we do and glimmers of when we don’t.”

With their offense sputtering early, the Mavericks (14-3, 12-3 5A SIC) fell behind by as many as 10 points in the second quarter. But with about 4 minutes to go before the half, Slocum knocked down the second of his four 3-pointers to shift the momentum in the Mavericks’ favor.

Mountain View went on a 14-2 run to close out the second quarter, and then bounded out of the gate in the third quarter with Robinson’s first of three 3s.

“Once we got everybody involved in the game and gave everybody the ball and a chance to shoot, we kind of warmed up on offense,” Slocum said. “It’s a team effort tonight, I think.”

While Percifield — who owns the fourth-highest scoring average in the 5A SIC at 14.6 points per game — was having an off night, the senior countered by finding open teammates for a game-best seven assists.

“Even though Tanner wasn’t doing the thing that he normally does for us, he found other guys, which is huge in terms of what we are preaching to the kids,” Nettleton said. “Sometimes, your shot is just not on.”

Slocum added another 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter to put the Mavericks up 38-35. Robinson’s 3 at the start of the fourth put Centennial (11-6, 9-6) on its heels.

“After that point I felt like we didn’t do a very good job of running our offense,” Centennial coach Tom Aipperspach said. “Defensively, we really didn’t play as well as we did the first three quarters.”

Rachel Roberts: 377-6422,Twitter: @IDS_VarsityX