Canfield senior and former Beaver Local student Jace Riccardo dunks against East Liverpool’s Javan Dawson on Tuesday. (Morning Journal/Jimmy Joe Savage)

EAST LIVERPOOL — Youthful East Liverpool’s boys basketball team ran into Division IV power Canfield, the hottest team in the Mahoning Valley, here Tuesday night and dropped a one-sided 79-36 decision to the Cardinals in a running clock game at Potter Fieldhouse.

Red-hot Canfield (16-2) is leading the OHSAA’s Division IV Northeast RPI rankings and has won 11 games in a row.

“We are (playing at the top of its game),” said Canfield head coach Andy Vlajkovich. “We have a standard every night and this team’s really gotten better.”

“The only way we lose is if we don’t learn anything from tonight,” said East Liverpool head coach Kade Reynolds, whose team was again without injured standout Dre’Keim Abercrombie and started four underclassmen, including two freshmen. “I think that was really good for our young guys to see that type of basketball, because Canfield does everything the right way.”

The Cardinals were led by junior standout Jace Riccardo, a powerful 6-7 center who has the quickness of a guard. Riccardo took game-scoring honors with 21 points, including three slam dunks in just two and a half quarters of basketball. That was before Vlajkovich pulled all of his starters midway through the third quarter with Canfield up by 40 points (57-17) at the time.

Riccardo played at Beaver Local through eighth grade and he was a top player at Youngstown Ursuline the past two seasons before opting to play for the Cardinals this year.

“I love it here and I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” said Riccardo. “We feel good as a whole unit, honestly. We come into every game knowing we have to give it our all and we come out and do it every night. That’s what really matters.”

“He (Riccardo) shoots it really good,” said Vlajkovich. “His physical presence is somewhat impressive and he’s a great leader and a great kid. Our guys love him. He is as much a part of our culture as he is our productivity.”

“Jace is great,” said East Liverpool’s Reynolds. “He’s been around a lot of good basketball for a few years now from Ursuline to Canfield and he’s just a kid that does everything the right way. He rebounds the ball and he passes the ball and they don’t care who gets the points. He’s definitely a special talent and he’s fun to watch.”

Riccardo scored 18 points in the first half alone as the Cardinals took first-half quarter stop leads of 20-7 and 48-15.

“I thought in the first quarter our defense gave them fits, we turned them over a little but we just couldn’t get the ball to go in the hoop for us,” said Reynolds.

For the game, complementing Riccardo in double figure scoring for the Cardinals was Grant Seachrist with 16 points, including four of the Cardinals’ 12 three-pointers on the night, while teammate Ryan Hlywa added eight markers.

East Liverpool (8-10) finished with no players in double figures, but leading the Potters was Tyler Kirby with eight points, while Nolan Irving and Ben Myers added seven and six points, respectively.

The Cardinals, who are also young but very talented, forced 13 turnovers out of the youthful Potters in the first half.

“We have two seniors,” said Vlajkovich. “It’s a young team, and if you saw us on Night 1 when Chaney absolutely obliterated us, it (the tremendous improvement) is a lot to our growth over the past two months. It has been pretty impressive. The guys in the locker room deserve all the credit, they’ve bought into practice every day and bought into each other every day and you can see the way they play pretty unselfish — the ball moves and they guard hard.”

Reynolds, whose young Potters are expected to get Abercrombie back from injury Friday when they play at Steubenville, said he wants his young team to play teams like Canfield as a learning experience.

“That’s the type of game we want,” said the East Liverpool coach. “We would rather play a team like that than to go beat somebody by 20 or 30. This is only going to make us better. “They (the Cardinals) are fundamental, they play hard, they hit the open man and make the extra pass and they play defense. That’s the standard where our young guys should want to get to because that’s the type of basketball we want to be playing the next two or three years.”

A running clock started when Canfield went up 50-15 on its first basket of the second half. The Cardinals, who led 68-20 after three quarters, took their largest leads of the evening at 50 points twice in the second half, the last coming 72-22 with 6:47 left in the game.

Game notes

• Canfield won the junior varsity game by a 67-26 final in a running clock.

• East Liverpool will travel to Steubenville Friday night to play Big Red at the Crimson Center.

• Canfield hosts Warren Harding Friday night in an All-American Conference game.

CA: 20-28-20-11–79

EL: 7- 8- 7-14–36

CANFIELD SCORING: Donnie Ferko 3-0-7, Collin Casey 1-0-3, Bryce Roberts 2-0-5, Tyce Bair 2-0-5, Joe Gabriel 3-0-7, Landon Shina 2-0-5, Jace Riccardo 9-1-21, Ryan Hlywa 4-0-8, Grant Seachrist 6-0-16, Sean Tokash 1-0-2. TEAM TOTALS: 33, 1-2: 79

EAST LIVERPOOL SCORING: Jayce Douglas 1-0-2, Dre Brown 2-0-4, Tyler Kirby 3-2-8, Nolan Irving 3-1-7, Meshach Harris 1-0-2, Ben Myers 2-0-6, Elliott Fitch 2-0-4, Javan Dawson 0-1-1, D. Austin 0-0-0, T. Long 1-0-2 TEAM TOTALS: 15, 4-8: 36

Three-point goals: Canfield 12 (Grant Seachrist 4, Jace Riccardo 2, Joe Gabriel 1, Donnie Ferko 1, Collin Casey 1, Tyce Bair 1, Landon Shina 1, Bryce Roberts 1). East Liverpool 2 (Ben Myers 2).

Total fouls: Canfield 10, East Liverpool 5. Fouled out: none.