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Crusaders Rally By Bishop Boys

McMECHEN — Steubenville Catholic coach Chris Tarquinio may not be the biggest fan of his team’s schedule, opening the season with its first five games on the road, but his Crusaders have responded nicely early.

Friday night was no different as Steubenville Catholic battled through foul trouble and another hostile crowd to pick up its biggest win to date.

Junior A.J. Conner scored 14 of his team-high 24 points in the second half as the Crusaders rallied from an early 12-point deficit and then held on late to claim a 67-65 triumph against debuting Bishop Donahue on Tommy “Dino” Smith Court.

Trailing 39-31 at 5:18 of the third quarter the visitors began putting things together, going on an 11-0 run that put them ahead for the first time since the 4:58 mark of the first quarter, 42-39. It was a lead Catholic Central never relinquished.

Tarquinio’s crew led 47-43 after three and pushed the margin to eight, 62-54, with 1:10 to play. Down 66-59, Coach Tom Wise’s team got a long triple from West Virginia all-stater Taylor Straughn that made it 66-62 with 32 seconds remaining and after a pair of missed free throws, Koltin Kleeh drained a 3 eight seconds later to cut the margin to one at 66-65.

Austin Fowkes hit the front-end of a two-shot foul with 12 seconds showing to put the visitors up by two. The Bishops worked the ball up court looking for Straughn or Kleeh, however, with both covered Logan Ruckh’s bomb from the corner was off the mark as the buzzer sounded.

“That was all heart. The kids played hard and they never gave up,” Tarquinio said. “This was our third road game in a row, and while that isn’t an ideal situation, it can give a team character and we have handled it well. We still have two more to go before we finally get a home game against these guys (Bishop Donahue).

“We haven’t shot the ball well through three games, but we have been getting good looks. I told the kids to keep shooting and battle on and they did that in the second half.

“I know we fell behind early on, but I called a couple of timeouts and preached consistency to the kids and they never quit. Even when we got in foul trouble they kept their composure and battled through.

“I also want to give credit to our reserve team, which gets forgotten a lot. They were down 15 in the third quarter and came back and won and I really think the varsity was able to feed off of that a little bit.”

Steubenville Catholic hit 21 of 42 shots, but really got hot in the second half when they were 12 of 15 from the floor. Donnie Vandeborne added 15 for the winners while Matt Kilonski and Fowkes had 11 each.

Donahue got off to a great start, leading 17-9 before Straughn even hit the scoring column. Straughn struggled with his shot — and foul trouble — for much of the game, but scored 13 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter. Kleeh led all scorers with 26 while sophomore Anthony Robbins had nine points and 11 rebounds before fouling out.

“It’s a very tough loss,” Wise said. “We don’t lose here often. We got in some foul trouble, had a kid foul out, another didn’t play with a sprained ankle and we looked like a team playing its first game against a team playing its third.

“The foul trouble hurt our aggressiveness, but we made a lot of mistakes overall. Steubenville Central played very hard and physical, but we still had a shot to win it at the end.

”They hit a couple of easy layups late in the game and we missed a lot of free throws in the fourth quarter.

“Early on we were trying to create tempo, and doing a good job of it with a 19-9 lead. But for whatever reason they managed to cut it to four at the half. Our speed was really to my liking in the first quarter, then we seemed to go into glacier-mode after that.”

Things won’t get any easy for the Bishops who travel down state next weekend to take on Valley Fayette on Friday night and Charleston Catholic on Saturday. Meanwhile, Steubenville Catholic travels to Madonna and Toronto before finally heading home.

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