photo by: Kim North

St. Clairsville’s Brody Clifford (3) scores two of his 15 points after faking out John Marshall’s Preston Watkins (5) during Tuesday night’s game on John Jenkins Court inside St. Clairsville High School. The Red Devils won, 85-74.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – After a tough, last-second loss 24 hours earlier, St. Clairsville wasn’t about to let that happen again on Wednesday night.

The senior frontcourt tandem of Griffin Straub (30) and Niko Jacob (21) combined for 51 points as the Red Devils bounced back from Tuesday night’s heartbreaker with an 85-74 nod over visiting John Marshall on John Jenkins Court inside St. Clairsville High School.

“The first thing I did Wednesday morning when I woke up was to text our seniors and challenge them to be a mature, veteran team,” St. Clairsville head coach Ryan Clifford said. “Sure, it didn’t go our way last night, but it was a good game. We had some lapses there in the middle, but our goal tonight was to come out and score one more point than they did, and move on to Friday. We accomplished that.”

St. Clairsville (11-3) led 23-18 at the end of the first quarter and held leads of 32-18 and 43-25 before the Monarchs (5-6) used a 17-2 run to make it 45-40 at the half.

“We have an issue with starting games slow and we claw our way back, like we did tonight to trail by five at the half,” John Marshall head coach Michael Thomas said. “I told them at halftime that we couldn’t let them extend their lead, and then we let them score 26 points in the third.

“I thought our effort and intensity was there, but we didn’t get stops when we needed to.”

Straub and Jacob scored 19 of those points.

“They played really well tonight,” Thomas said of the Red Devils.

“Niko is a big reason why we won tonight,” Clifford allowed. “When you play as hard as he does, it makes the rest of them do it because they don’t want to let him down. He’s been tremendous all season, and he was again tonight.”

After missing his first shot from the floor, the 6-2 Jacob tickled the twine on his next seven. He duplicated that effort from the foul line for his career-high point total, of which 10 came in the third quarter when the hosts pulled away for good.

Junior Brody Clifford continued his fine play. Inserted into the starting lineup after Luke Schafer went down with an ankle injury last week against Martins Ferry, the nephew of the head coach has turned it on. He had 15 points, including a trio of treys.

Kayden Knapp paced John Marshall with 20 points. Three other Monarchs reached double figures as Landon Snyder had 13. Jackson Helms and Preston Watkins evenly split 22.

St. Clairsville led 31-21 off the glass as Straub, the Indiana, Pa., signee had eight. Jacob and Ollie Muhly had six each. Snyder had five and Watkins four for the Monarchs.

John Marshall charted just five turnovers, six less than St. Clairsville.

The Red Devils remain at home Friday as Union Local visits. The Monarchs host East Fairmont on Monday.