CIRCLEVILLE — Circleville put an exclamation point on the regular season with a 59-44 win over Amanda-Clearcreek Monday night.
A three from Channing Riley gave the Aces a 22-21 lead two minutes into the second half, but the Tigers took control to get out in front 36-25 by the end of the quarter.
“I think it’s just executing on offense,” Circleville coach Jordan Blakeman said. “ I feel like that, like the Miami Trace game, we were super flat and I think we carried that over a little bit. You know, we had to get hit in the mouth a little bit, I think, and got rolling.”
The Tigers hit 9 of 13 free throws down the stretch as part of a 23-23 fourth quarter to keep the Aces at bay.
“They ended up scoring quite a few there, too many for my liking, but we held them down for a long, long time,” Blakeman said.
Addison Edgington led the Tigers with 23 points, and she pulled down 14 rebounds.
The Tigers got a bump early from Juliana Sims-Ross who had six points in the first quarter as part of an 18-point night.
“Ana had her best game of the season. Like, straight up, came out, hit big shots,” Blakeman said. “She’s always good on defense. Her stat line’s not always there. People don’t realize it, but she’s a huge help on defense. She’s super quick. She understands the game.
“She doesn’t even know why she does some stuff sometimes. She just has a feel for it. So, yeah, she showed up huge tonight.”
The game was tight in the first half with Circleville leading 10-8 after the first quarter and 19-16 at halftime. The Tigers were able to keep AC’s leading scorer Taylor Evans scoreless through the first 16 minutes and limited to seven points for the game.
“They did a very nice job of that,” AC coach Tim Leist said of keeping Evans under control. “We went at halftime pretty encouraged, considering we had 10 turnovers. We were down three.
“But then we just hit a wall there in that third quarter.”
CHS had a 10-3 rebounding edged in the third and AC was 3-9 shooting from the field.
“That’s where Addison made a big difference there in that third quarter and kind of took over,” Leist said.
The Aces came in Monday riding an eight-game winning streak and Leist hopes they’ve got some more of that in them when the Aces travel to North Union Saturday afternoon to open tournament play.
“In games like this my hope and prayer all week was both teams stay healthy. Because both teams have big goals in front of them going into the tournament,” Leist said. “We told the girls, that’s a good opportunity for us to go up there and try to get one on Saturday and see where we can go from this, because this is when I felt like last year we played our best basketball in the tournament.”
Circleville is going to have wait until a week from Thursday to start tournament play.
The win wrapped up an 11-1 run through the league and the Tigers (18-4) celebrated their final regular season win by cutting down the championship nets.
“Great season so far, but now I’m ready for the fun part,” Blakeman said. “Fun part for the coaches, I think, the tournament time, so I’m ready; they’re ready.”
Channing Riley led the Aces (9-13, 5-7) with 12 points Monday and Cate Buckley led the team with five rebounds.
Circleville 59, Amanda-Clearcreek 48
Amanda-Clearcreek — Hayden Plank 2-2-7, Cate Buckley 3-0-6, Taylor Evans 2-3-7, Kirra Wiseman 1-0-3, Kaylie Wilson 3-0-9, Channing Riley 4-0-12, Abbie Leist 2-0-4. Three-point goals — Plank, Evans, Wiseman, Wilson (3), Riley (4). Totals — 17-40 5-10 48.
Circleville — Briley Cramer 2-1-6, Maddie Blakeman 0-3-3, Juliana Sims-Ross 5-6-18, Kaylee West 1-4-6, Addison Edgington 10-3-23, Mallory McConnell 1-1-3. Three-point goals — Cramer, Sims-Ross (2). Totals — 19-37 18-29 59.
Quarter scores 1 2 3 4 F
Am.-Clearcreek 8 8 9 23 48
Circleville 10 9 17 23 59