photo by: Andrew Grimm

Steubenville’s Santino Haney shoots a reverse layup against the John Marshall Monarch defense on Tuesday during the two teams’ OVAC 5A semifinal game inside the Crimson Center.

STEUBENVILLE — Some lights out shooting kept John Marshall in Tuesday’s OVAC Class 5A semifinal at top-seeded Big Red for a half.

Once Steubenville turned up the defense, though, Big Red showed why it has that No. 1 beside its spot in the bracket.

Big Red, which led by 10 at the break, opened the third quarter with a 16-0 run, turning JM turnovers into points the other way to run the lead up in a hurry and it stayed at 25 or above the rest of the way to a 91-64 victory inside the Crimson Center.

“We just kind of talked to them at halftime about picking it up on defense,” Big Red head coach Mike Haney said. “I felt like our defense was lackluster in the first half. Thank goodness we were playing really well on offense and scoring. JM has great shooters, it didn’t seem like they didn’t miss a shot, so we talked about closing out and not giving them space. In the second half, we did that.

“That third quarter we really turned it up.”

After the Monarchs (7-10) shot 81.8 percent in the opening quarter and 72.7 percent overall in the first half to hang around, JM was just 37.5 percent from the field in the second half. They did finish above 50 percent from 3-point range with 10 long range makes, but it was not enough to keep it close.

“We knew they were going to make a run at some point in time,” JM head coach Mike Thomas said. “We started the second half with a couple turnovers back-to-back and gave them easy buckets and they didn’t look back. They’re hard to slow down once they get going. When they got going, it got us a little tired — we’re not a real deep team — and it took us out of our offense and what we wanted to do. Then we had to press a little bit, which we didn’t want to do, we wanted to slow it down. We played their kind of game and they’re really good at their game.

“We won’t see a team as good as them the rest of the way. Playing them will help us the rest of the way. We played well for a half, just didn’t put a full game together.”

Big Red’s shooting was more even throughout as they finished 56.7 percent on the night, had five players reach double figures and hit nine 3-pointers.

Santino Haney, the OVAC 5A leading scorer, netted a game-high 26 points to go with nine assists, five rebounds and two steals. Tre Wiggins, making his return to the line up after missing Big Red’s last game with an illness, followed with 20 points, four rebounds, four assists, four steals and a block.

Jermaine Moore, Cole Bowers and Braidyn Edwards each added 10 points, Bowers pulling down five rebounds and adding two assists and Edwards, who came off the bench, tallying four boards, two assists and two steals.

It was nearly six in double figures as JoJo Rea netted eight points and had a slam dunk that energized the crowd early.

All told, Big Red (17-1) got offensive contributions from eight different players despite still being without regular starter Landon Bowers.

“Everybody contributed, everybody was scoring,” coach Haney said. “We rotated seven most of the time before we got everybody in and all seven scored.”

The opening quarter was played at a blistering pace as both teams barely missed a shot, Big Red shooting 75 percent and holding a 30-21 lead after eight minutes. Edwards came off the bench and knocked down 3s on back-to-back possessions late in the frame to open the lead up.

After Big Red led by as many as 11 and JM had the margin as low as five in the second quarter, Moore sunk a triple late to make the margin 49-39 at the break.

The 16-0 Big Red run to start the third quickly made little doubt about who would be playing on Saturday morning. Steubenville led by as many as 34 before the teams subbed early in the fourth.

The Monarchs were led by 22 points, five assists and two rebounds from Preston Watkins, while Jackson Helms knocked down five 3s and finished with 17 points.

Big Red held a 28-17 rebounding advantage and forced JM into 17 turnovers, recording a total of 11 steals.

ANOTHER SHOT AT THE TROPHY

Big Red is competing for the 5A title for a second year in a row after falling to Morgantown in a close game in the final a year ago.

They will meet Wheeling Park in the 10 a.m. game to start the day of action inside the ECO Center Saturday morning. Big Red won the regular season meeting between the teams earlier this season, 77-45.

The Patriots edged Brooke, 55-50, in the other semifinal.

“We have to be ready to go,” coach Haney said. “We have a couple days to be prepared to get up early and come out ready to go Saturday.”