Steubenville senior Nylah McShan scored 28 points on 9-11 shooting on Saturday in Big Red’s OVAC 5A championship victory over John Marshall, 64-48, inside Ohio University Eastern’s ECO Center.

It was the Steubenville girls basketball team’s first OVAC title since 2013, as Big Red moved to 19-1 on the season.

“I am so excited for these young ladies,” Steubenville head coach Angelita Forte said after the game. “They’ve worked hard for this. They come into practice, they get after it, they get up and down the court. They don’t complain about the conditioning. They understand what it was going to take in order to win a game like this. So I’m super proud of their effort to come in here and play as hard as they played, to be able to come out with the win.”

In addition to her 28 points, McShan grabbed five rebounds, nabbed two steals and blocked two shots. She was honored as the John Howell Memorial Most Valuable Player of the game.

“She’s going to give you all she has every time she steps on the floor,” Forte said of McShan. “She loves the game of basketball.

“When she steps on the court, she has a winning mentality and she brings up her teammates with her, being the example of what it looks like and what it takes in order to come out with a win. So I wouldn’t expect anything less from her to come out and put up big points and get a couple of rebounds in the midst of that and play some great defense.”

Bailee Beall scored 12 with five assists for Steubenville. Lucy Saccocia and Phynyx Fleming had eight apiece.

“[McShan] takes a lead, but she’s got a whole crew that’s there with her on that court,” Forte said. “We talk about– it doesn’t take just the five kids on the court, it takes every single kid in practice, every single kid on the bench to keep the momentum going. And I think that’s what we saw tonight out of every single role within the team.”

Steubenville got out to a 16-9 lead after the first quarter, and led 36-24 at halftime. In the first half, Steubenville shot over 46% from the field, while John Marshall was held to 33% shooting. Forte said that she was hoping her team would come out firing.

“We know John Marshall is a good team and we know they’re gonna come to battle every single day,” Forte said. “So one of our goals was we wanted to come out and jump on them early and try to control the tempo of the game from there. That’s what we try to do. And I’m just proud of the girls to be able to accomplish getting that lead in the beginning and being able to sustain that throughout the game.”

The Monarch’s offense improved in the second half, but it was too little, too late.

“The team that deserved to win, won,” John Marshall head coach Brock Melko said. “They just played more physical, especially in the first half. McShan controlled every aspect of the game from start to finish.

“I was pretty happy with how we responded once we got down, but we can’t dig ourselves into that hole and then try to come back. If we would’ve played the whole game like we played the second half, we probably would’ve been okay. But again, I think that just the difference in the game was that McShan controlled everything about the game.”

Rilee Storm led John Marshall with 18 points, while Kaylee White scored 15 and Kalyn Reese scored nine with a game-high seven rebounds.

Saturday was the Monarchs’ first appearance in the OVAC Finals since 2019.