CLEARFIELD – With a startling 20-1 fourth quarter bulge the Harmony boys basketball team earned a hard fought victory over the Clearfield Bisons, 56-43, Friday night at Clearfield.
The Bisons had leads as big as seven a couple of times during the first three quarters but could never shake off their visitors from Westover as Harmony finished the regular season at 16-6 heading into the upcoming District 6 playoffs.
With the loss Clearfield, playing it’s fourth game in five nights, falls to 13-8 on the 2009-10 campaign.
Clearfield head coach Forrest Campman spoke after the game, “I thought we played just an awful game and they (Harmony) played very well. We had way too many turnovers and for most of the night we didn’t defend well at all.”
The Bisons jumped out to a first quarter lead of 8-2 before the Owls went up 9-8. Then Clearfield went on a 8-0 run of their own to gain a 16-9 advantage early in the second period.
Trey Campman, coming back from a foot injury, had eight first quarter points including two three pointers to fuel the Bisons early on. Teammates Ben Johnson and Jack Mellgard each had six in the second frame that helped Clearfield to a 30-27 lead at the intermission.
It was junior Erik Welteroth of Harmony that kept the Owls close in the first sixteen minutes as the 6’2” forward had thirteen second quarter points.
The Owls would even the score at 36-36 with 3:38 remaining in the third eight minutes before Clearfield’s Andrew Redden and John Mellgard took the Bisons on a 6-0 run to end the third frame with Clearfield leading 42-36. Redden had two field goals and Mellgard was 2 for 2 from the free throw line in the final three minutes of the period.
Then a monstrous fourth quarter for the Owls and one to forget for the Bisons.
Clearfield would take another seven point lead early in the fourth, 43-36, on a free throw by senior Chad Zurat. The free throw was off of a two shot technical foul called on Harmony long time head coach Terry Kruise.
Then the Bisons went cold, real cold, not scoring another point the remainder of the game.
The Owls? They got hot, real hot, with an unbelievable 20-0 sprint to close out the Bisons.
Welteroth and Aaron Frailey, the lone starting senior, paced Harmony with seven fourth quarter points each, as the Owls made 9 of 10 from the charity stripe to pick up the much valued win.
On the evening Welteroth had 22 and Cameron Norris had 10 for Harmony while Clearfield had Zurat with 9 and Campman and Ben Johnson with eight apiece.
Campman continued with, “I thought Harmony did a nice job on Zurat with a box and one defensively, taking him out of our offense at times.” Then Campman closed by saying, “We just didn’t play very well tonight but Harmony certainly had something to do with that.”
In junior varsity action it was Clearfield coming out on top of the Owls 53-30.
Clearfield will play it’s final regular season game at home on Monday night against the Mountain Lions of Altoona. The JV contest gets underway at 6 pm with the varsity to immediately follow.
It will then be a long layoff for the Bisons after Monday’s game as they will play Bradford on Saturday, March 6 for the District 9 AAA championship at a site and time to be determined. The Bisons lost to Bradford twice during the regular season, 60-25 and 61-38.
Listen to Bison basketball on Monday on WOKW-FM, 102.9, with the pre-game show starting at 7:15 pm.
The Owls move on to the District 6 Class A playoffs with a first round game on Tuesday at Richland Junior Senior High School against Bishop Carroll at 7:30 pm. Harmony is the number five seed while Bishop Carroll is seeded number 12.
HARMONY – Cameron Norris 4 1-2 10, Tyler Tiesi 2 2-2 6, Erik Welteroth 10 0-0 22, Logan Hutton 2 2-2 6, Aaron Frailey 2 5-6 9, Kyle Gallaher 1 1-2 3, TOTALS – 21 11-14 56
CLEARFIELD – Ben Johnson 3 0-0 8, Chad Zurat 4 1-3 9, John Mellgard 2 2-3 6, Jason Bowman 0 0-0 0, Curtis Bell 1 0-0 2, Trey Campman 3 0-0 8, Andrew Redden 2 0-0 4, Curtis Frye 1 2-2 4, Luke Peterson 1 0-0 2, TOTALS – 17 5-8 43
SCORE BY QUARTERS:
HARMONY 9 18 9 20 56
CLEARFIELD 14 16 12 1 43
THREE-POINTERS: HARMONY – 3 Welteroth 2, Norris CLEARFIELD – 4 Johnson 2, Campman 2
OFFICIALS: Ted Beam, Skip Dry and Dick Wagner