Dubois—The Bisons knew they needed big games from their ‘Big Three” Thursday night in order to win the District 9 AAA Championship, and unfortunately they did not get them.
Matt Shiner, Todd Hryn, and Jarrin Campman, Clearfields leading scorers for the year, only managed to score 24 points combined. Thursday night\’s game hands down was the worst played by Clearfield’s “Big Three”, as they committed numerous turnovers and didn’t have their normal positive impact on the game and that led to the Bisons 60-37 loss.
“Jarrin and Matt played their worst game of the year tonight; neither of them were able to do much. The thing about tonight is everyone played badly from the starters to the bench, except for Drew Hipps he played well,” said Coach Forrest Campman
Clearfield got off to a shaky start putting themselves in a hole right off the bat trailing just minutes into the game and eventually falling behind 17-6 at the end of the first period of play.
“We came out and took some bad shots tonight, but they were the same bad shots we took last week against Punxsy and they went in. Other than Todd having few perimeter shots rim out in the beginning of the game, we weren’t even close to making any shots. We blew layups and wide open shots, and you can’t do that if you want to win. If someone would have asked me about our teams execution I would have said I was all for it,” commented Campman.
In the second quarter the Bisons were able to slightly chip away at the lead going on a short run with two minutes left in the half to cut the lead to 32-24.
“We were able to cut the lead down with a minute or so to go in the half, but as soon as the second half started we gave them an opportunity to pull ahead again with dumb turnovers. We had 21 turnovers tonight but it felt like we had 42, because they scored on every one of our mistakes. They had 11 turnovers and we didn’t score or take advantage of a single one,” said Campman
The Bisons came out just as flat in the third as they were in the first half mustering only four points in the quarter, a season low. Bradord\’s defense took advantage of the Bison turnovers to go up 41-28.
In the fourth quarter the Owls shut the door, denying Coach Campman of his first District 9 title and the team of their 20th win. The only bright side to this poor performance Thursday night is that the Bisons still have at least one more game left in the state tournament as they take on the third seeded team in District 10 (Meadville) in the play in game.
“We played our best game of the season last week and our worst game tonight. Hopefully the seesaw stays in swing like that and we play our best game again next Tuesday in the State playoffs. Our goal is to win a game in the state playoffs, because we want to represent our school, our community, the kids, parents, and all the fans, and we want to give them that win. We play Meadville and they are a good team, they are big, but if we can play a good game we can give ourselves a chance to keep playing,” said Campman.
BRADFORD 60, CLEARFIELD 37
Score by Quarters
Bradford 17 15 9 19 – 60
Clearfield 6 18 4 9 – 37
BRADFORD (18-7) – 60
Tom Taylor 6 4-5 14, Matt White 0 0-0 0, Ryan LaBrozzi 6 0-0 12, Drew Kelly 2 0-0 5, Matt Teribery 0 0-0 0, Ian Ivancic 1 0-0 2, David Fuhrman 1 0-0 3, Ben Lanich 7 4-5 18, Randy Confer 4 1-2 9, Evan Kline 0 0-0 0 Totals 27 9-12 60
CLEARFIELD (19-7) – 37
Trey Campman 1 0-0 3, Parker Herrington 0 0-0 0, David Ryan 0 0-0 0, Nathan Greenland 0 0-0 0, Joel Fox 0 0-0 0, Jarrin Campman 1 4-4 6, Matt Shiner 3 2-2 8, Nick Redden 0 0-0 0, Todd Hryn 4 2-2 10, R. Cruise Kerr 0 0-0 0, Drew Hipps 4 2-4 10, Curtis Bell 0 0-0 0. Totals 13 10-12 37.
THREE POINTERS – Bradford 4 (Taylor 2, Kelly, Fuhrman). Clearfield (T.Campman)