“We’ve been putting a lot of pressure on Anna lately about bringing the ball up court,” Clarion first-year head coach Tracy Durish said. “She was putting so much focus on bringing the ball up court that she wasn’t creating opportunities for herself to shoot. So we’ve been splitting the responsibility between her and Kelly (Beveridge) and you can see tonight by them splitting that they both actually had opportunities to bring the ball up the court and shoot, and we got points out of both of them. It was hard for the other team to defend that, because they didn’t know who was going to shoot and who was going to bring the ball up the court. It really changed the game tonight.”

Beveridge added 10 points, and was one of three Lady Cats in double figures with Sophie Wolf also scoring 11 points.

“It was a total team effort,” Durish said. “We had a plan on how we were going to play VC and what we were going to need to do defensively, and they executed the plan. We had several girls step up on offense.”

It was really on the defensive side of the ball where the game was won.

Clarion (2-1 overall, 1-0 KSAC North) forced 16 turnovers and limited the Lady Vikings (1-2 overall, 0-1) to 12 of 39 shooting (30.7 percent) including 4 of 22 (18.1 percent) in the first half allowing the Lady Cats take a 26-12 halftime lead.

“You have to give Clarion credit,” Venango Catholic head coach Tom McNellie said. “They took it to us. They handed it to us. I am majorly disappointed, and the girls were majorly disappointed too. We’re young. A freshman and sophomore ball handler, and we knew there would be a learning curve. But I was hoping it would be better than this.”

The Lady Cats were able to keep Venango Catholic 1,000-point scorer Ava Homan in check in the first half limiting her to just five first-half points.

“Maddy Weaver, our best defender, did an amazing job,” Durish said. “She was all over her and stayed out of foul trouble. And we talked about anyone on the backside was supposed to cover the lob. It definitely worked.”

Homan, as all good players do, fought through the Clarion defense in the second half and scored 17 of the Lady Vikings 22 second-half points to finish tied with Reed for game-high honors with 22.

But McNellie wasn’t happy in general with how his offense performed.

“We got totally away from our offense tonight,” the veteran VC coach said. “Even Ava got away from the offense tonight. She was trying to do things she is not good at.”

Clarion is back in action Friday night at Cranberry, while Venango Catholic is off until Tuesday when it travels to Clarion-Limestone.

CLARION 48, VENANGO CATHOLIC 34

Score by Quarters

Venango Catholic 5 7 8 14 — 34

Clarion 12 14 15 7 — 48

VENANGO CATHOLIC — 34

Tessa Stack 2 0-0 4, Ashley Finch 1 0-1 3, Destinee Sheffer 0 1-2 1, Sarah Groner 2 0-0 4, Ava Homan 7 7-8 22, Taylor Vroman 0 0-0 0, Lily Nwokedi 0 0-0 0. Totals 12 8-11 34.

CLARION — 48

Kelly Beveridge 5 0-0 10, Maddy Weaver 1 0-0 2, Anna Reed 9 2-2 22, Jenna Beichner 0 0-0 0, Sophie Wolf 4 2-2 11, Keanna Over 0 0-0 0, Maya Thornton 1 0-0 2, Wendy Beveridge 0 1-2 1. Totals 20 5-6 48.

THREE-POINTERS: Venango Catholic 2 (Finch, Homan). Clarion 3 (Reed 2, Wolf).