CLEARFIELD — The Clearfield Area High School boys basketball team stretched its late-season winning streak to five Saturday by building a huge lead midway through the third quarter and then staving off a Ridgway comeback for a 41-36 victory on Senior Night in Arthur J. Weiss Gymnasium.
Coach Forrest Campman shouldered some of the blame for the deceiving final tally in the non-conference home finale that had been postponed twice earlier in the week.
\”We were up 16 at halftime and came out and scored seven or eight points right away in the third quarter, and they could not do a thing with our press,\” he explained. \”We just had beaten their jayvees 49-6 and I didn\’t want to run up the score, so I took the press off.
\”We\’re not going to be playing like that the rest of the year, either. It\’s not that we don\’t want to run all the time. We\’ll press now and then when we know it\’s going to be a tight ball game and look to run when we get the opportunities.
\”When I took away the press, it seemed like it took away our aggressiveness, even defensively. We sort of got hesitant. We started missing wide open shots, we really didn\’t get inside and we weren\’t getting any rebounds. It was more like we were protecting the lead and not being assertive enough. We played way too conservatively.\”
Clearfield still carried a comfortable 39-24 lead into the final eight minutes, but the Bisons couldn\’t buy a basket from the field or foul line, hitting only two of nine free throws after the Elkers began fouling in desperation.
\”They ran their offense a little better and the (Dan) Lindgren kid got hot,\” Campman said. \”They were down, so they were launching three-pointers and making them, and we left a couple guys open out there. On the offensive end, we were trying to be patient, and it went from being patient to everybody looking to somebody else to shoot. And we just didn\’t score.\”
Ridgway managed to cut the margin to four points (39-35) but couldn\’t make it a one-possession game.
Campman stayed with his senior starters — John Lhota, James Zimmerman, Mike Johnson, Andrew Janocko and Kyle Kline — most of the way, and they combined for all but seven of the points. Zimmerman scored 11 points, Lhota hit a trio of three-pointers and Johnson added eight points and 10 rebounds as the Bisons upped their record to 14-8.
Lindgren had 17 points and Kevin Close 10 for the 4-19 Elkers.
Clearfield closes the regular season with road games against Central Mountain at Lock Haven Monday and Punxsutawney Thursday.
Coach Don Billotte\’s Bison jayvees breezed to a 49-6 win to improve their record to 17-3. Tyler Wilson and Parker Herrington were high with eight points apiece.
RIDGWAY — 36
Bill Egger 1 0-1 3, Ray Buhler 1 0-0 2, Hudson Rees 2 0-0 4, Brandon Hribik 0 0-0 0, Kevin Close 4 0-0 10, Dan Lindgren 8 0-2 17, Mike Rapp 0 0-0 0. Totals: 16 0-3 36.
CLEARFIELD — 41
John Lhota 3 0-1 9, Andrew Janocko 2 0-0 5, Mike Johnson 2 4-4 8, Kyle Kline 0 1-2 1, James Zimmerman 3 4-10 11, Jarrin Campman 1 0-1 2, Todd Hryn 2 0-1 5, Drew Hipps 0 0-0 0, Matt Shiner 0 0-0 0. Totals: 13 9-19 41.
Three-Point Field Goals: Ridgway 4 (Close 2, Egger 1, Lindren 1); Clearfield 6 (Lhota 3, Janocko 1, Hryn 1, Zimmerman 1).
Score by Quarters:
Ridgway 8 4 12 12 — 36
Clearfield 14 14 11 2 — 41