Special to the Journal/Jimmy Joe Savage East Liverpool’s Malachi Reed contests a shot by St. Clairsville’s Brady Schafer in an OVAC semifinal Tuesday.

EAST LIVERPOOL — Two high-scoring high school boys basketball teams matched prolific offenses when No. 2 seed East Liverpool met No. 3 seed St. Clairsville in an Ohio Valley Athletic Conference Class 4A semifinal at Potter Fieldhouse Tuesday night.

The Potters had the best of things in the first half, leading 43-42 at halftime, but the Red Devils exploded in the third quarter, outscoring the hosts 31-19 in the frame and went on to upend East Liverpool, 96-81.

The win vaults St. Clairsville (13-5) into Saturday afternoon’s OVAC championship game against host Harrison Central, the No. 1 seed.

“We are excited as heck to get to Saturday,” said St. Clairsville coach Ryan Clifford. “(East Liverpool) is a very good basketball team and this is a place that it’s really hard to come and win, and we executed at a super high level on offense.”

“We just couldn’t stop them,” said East Liverpool coach Nate Conley. “We thought all year long we’ve been a pretty good defensive team. We don’t give up a lot of points, but tonight they took it to us. We just couldn’t get stops when we had to.”

St. Clairsville’s offensive barrage was led by Tyson Pastor, who took game-scoring honors with 30 points. Teammate Cole Thoburn added 26, including 21 in the second half, slashing to the basket for layups on numerous occasions. He also made four of the Red Devils’ nine three-pointers .

“I just think we came out harder and played harder (in the second half),” said Thoburn. “Our shot selection was great in the second half and that’s how we scored a lot of points.

“We just really concentrated on trying to attack the basket and get the two guys (Pastor and Thoburn) that score a lot of points for us to make sure we get them in scoring position.”

Complementing Pastor and Thoburn in the scoring column were Griffin Straub with 17 points and Brady Schafer with 15.

Leading the Potters (15-4) in double digits was Preston Dawson with 19 points, while Preston Kerr added 18, Nate Birch had 16, including four of East Liverpool’s nine treys. Quintin Conrad had 15 points, including two triples.

“We scored when we wanted to, but we just couldn’t put stops together,” said Conley. “They created some unfavorable mismatches for us and brought our bigs away from the hoop which is tough. We have to figure something out because that’s not going to get it done.”

St. Clairsville jumped out to a five-point (20-15) lead after one, but East Liverpool had a 10-0 run to start the second quarter and took the lead on a three-pointer by Conrad at the 6:48 mark of the second quarter. The Potters took as much as a seven-point second-quarter advantage following a layup by Dawson, giving the Potters a 38-31 lead with 3:44 showing before halftime.

But the Red Devils answered with an 11-5 run to pull with one point (43-42) of the Potters at intermission.

But St. Clairsville came out on fire to start the third quarter, outscoring the Potters 24-13 to take a 66-56 lead and expanded it to an 11-point advantage after three at 73-62.

“It’s easy to say, let’s get a stop — they have good players and we have good players,” said Clifford of the hot-shooting by both teams.

The Red Devils took their largest lead at 16 points (86-70) following a Thoburn trey with 4:44 left. The Potters were able to get within 11 points at 90-79 but the Red Devils outscored the Potters 6-2 in the remaining time to cap off the 15-point win.

“We came out (of halftime) and said the most aggressive team wins every time,” said Clifford. “I was on them at halftime because we had 42 at the half and were down, but that’s a tribute to both teams in developing skill, so both teams can score and it’s hard to guard. We changed defenses a little bit to try and slow them (the Potters) down and it didn’t work great but it worked enough.”

“They looked like the better ball team tonight,” said Conley. “I never in a million years thought we would have played defense like we played tonight. We looked a little slow footed and that’s uncharacteristic because we’ve been defending at a high level.”

Thoburn is thrilled to get a chance to play for an OVAC title Saturday.

“It feels great, we need to win Saturday to get the hardware,” he said.

Conley said his Potters must now turn their attention to Friday’s consolation game against Beaver Local.

“It was just one of those nights,” he said. “I’m upset, the kids are upset because we were going for a three-peat in the OVAC, but you’ve got to give St. Clairsville credit, they played pretty good tonight. Now we’re going to have to regroup and figure it out because we’re hitting the road Friday night for the consolation game.”

East Liverpool won the junior varsity game 50-44.

SC: 20-22-31-23–96

EL: 15-28-19-19–81

ST. CLAIRSVILLE SCORING: Gage Wolfe 3-0-8, Ollie Muhly 0-0-0, Cole Thoburn 10-2-26, Brady Schafer 7-0-15, Tyson Pastor 11-7-30, Drew Gasber 0-0-0, Griffin Straub 8-0-17. TEAM TOTALS: 39, 9-12: 96

EAST LIVERPOOL SCORING: Cohen Pease 2-0-5, Nate Birch 6-0-16, Quintin Conrad 6-1-15, Preston Kerr 7-3-18, Malachi Reed 3-0-6, Preston Dawson 9-0-19, D’Shawn Kirby 1-0-2. TEAM TOTALS: 34, 4-8: 81

Three-point goals: St. Clairsville 9 (Cole Thoburn 4, Gage Wolfe 2, Brady Schafer, Tyson Pastor, Griffin Straub) East Liverpool 9 (Nate Birch 4, Quintin Conrad 2, Cohen Pease, Preston Kerr , Preston Dawson).

Total fouls: St. Clairsville 7, East Liverpool 12. Fouled out: None.