HYDE — On December 12 of last year the Central High School boys basketball team defeated the Clearfield Bison in the Dragons’ home arena, 50-29.
On Wednesday night at Clearfield, a perhaps over confident Central squad never got started against a Bison team that finally played the entire 32 minutes.
And the result was a 56-43 Clearfield victory over the visiting Dragons.
Bison head coach Forrest Campman following the win said, “We played very well tonight and of course it showed with us coming up with the win. The key was the fact that we played pretty good defense and we matched up with them well. We play a lot of match-up zone defense and I thought that we contained them pretty much all night.”
After scoring just 21 points two nights ago in DuBois, and being shut out in the fourth quarter against the Beavers, Clearfield had three players hit for double figures.
Bison senior Trey Jordan had a game high 20 points as junior Christian Lezzer dumped in 18, while another senior, Seth Beardsley, scored 10 in a well-rounded attack.
And each of those three players took over one quarter in the contest to keep Clearfield in front from start to finish.
Beardsley drained three from beyond the arc in the first eight minutes for nine points, which put Clearfield out in front 13-7 after one.
Then Lezzer dumped in nine points in the second stanza pushing the Bison to a 29-13 intermission lead.
Jordan finished off the Dragons in the fourth and final quarter with 13 points to propel Clearfield to a somewhat easy victory over now 9-5 Central.
In the first period Clearfield had a 3-2 margin when it went on a 10-0 run before the Dragons drew a little closer to go into the second period.
Clearfield increased the margin to 13 points, twice, in the second, leading 20-7 with 4:31 to go in the half and 29-16 at the break.
The Dragons got back into the battle mid-way through the third period, trailing just by six, 29-23, before Clearfield finished with a 6-1 run to keep the lead in double figures after three frames, 35-24.
Then Jordan took over the fourth quarter with those 13 points that helped withstand a short-lived 6-0 rally by Central, which cut the Bison edge to six again, 46-40.
Clearfield would not buckle and outscored Central, 10-3, over the final 2:04 to slay the Dragons and pick up its fifth win of the year against 10 losses.
Zach Slagenweit paced the Central offense with 19 points while hitting for four treys.
The junior varsity game went to Central, as it beat the Bison, 46-37, in the first contest of the evening.
Clearfield will make the long road trip to Huntingdon on Friday to meet up with the Bearcats who topped the Bison in mid-December 61-55. Varsity action is set to tip-off at 7:15 pm.
CENTRAL — 43
Austin Cunningham 2 1-2 5, Ryan Mills 0 0-0 0, Zach Slagenweit 7 1-2 19, Ben Brumbaugh 0 0-1 0, Lucas Patterson 3 0-0 6, Tristan Greenland 0 0-0 0, Alex Lafferty 0 2-2 2, Brenden Volkommer 2 2-2 6, Jacob Mellott 0 0-0 0, TOTALS – 15 6-9 43.
CLEARFIELD — 56
Christian Lezzer 8 0-2 18, Seth Beardsley 3 1-2 10, Wyatt Westen 0 2-2 2, Trey Jordan 7 6-11 20, Jon Janocko 2 2-3 6, Seth Ford 0 0-0 0, Andy Brown 0 0-0 0, Spencer Herrington 0 0-0 0, TOTALS – 20 11-20 56.
SCORE BY QUARTERS:
CENTRAL 7 9 8 19 43
CLEARFIELD 13 16 6 21 56
THREE-POINTERS: CENTRAL – 7 Slagenweit 4, Volkommer 2, Forshey CLEARFIELD – 5 Beardsley 3, Lezzer 2
OFFICIALS: Ken Knepp, Bud Brennan, George Schneider