KARNS CITY, Pa. (D9Sports) — After winning the District 9 Class 3A title in 2017, many people outside of the Karns City locker room thought 2018 might be a retooling year for the Gremlins.
(Photo: Nathan Waltman of Karns City who was named the Hager Paving Player of the Game)
See related story: C-L’s Ian Callen scores 1,000th career points
After all, a pair of freshmen and a junior who hadn’t seen much varsity time as a sophomore were expected to play key roles.
And when Karns City started 4-4 that seemed to be about what the year would go like.
But a funny thing happened along the way to .500. The Gremlins grew up, and now they are the KSAC South champions for the first time ever thanks to a 66-54 win over Clarion-Limestone Wednesday night in Karns City.
“I think it is big for our kids,” Karns City head coach Chris Bellis said. “I think the one thing about our kids is they never count themselves out. They didn’t come in wide-eyed, not expecting to do well.
“We started seeing it over the summer when these young players came in. Our older players were meshing well with the younger players. We knew we had some potential. It’s kind of fun being the team nobody really expects much from. We had fairly high expectations for ourselves, though. We knew what we had coming. If we could develop chemistry, we could get here.”
Karns City will try for its first conference title since winning the KSAC in its pre-divisional days in 2002 when its rematches with C-L, a team it split a pair of games with during the regular season, in the KSAC Title Game at 6 p.m. Friday at Clarion University’s Tippin Gym.
“We are pretty comfortable with what we have to prepare for,” Bellis said. “We just have to come out and out hustle them again. I thought that was the key to the win tonight.”
Freshman Nathan Waltman epitomized that hustle for Karns City tying his season high with 18 points while grabbing seven rebounds. A lot of his tallies came either on offensive rebounds or run outs, and he netted 10 of them in the fourth quarter to keep the Gremlins in front.
“Coach is preaching play hard, and that is what I did,” Waltman, who was named the Hager Paving Player of the Game, said. “We wanted to outwork them in every aspect, play as a team and communicate.”
Listen to more of Waltman’s thoughts on the game.
Fittingly enough, it was Waltman’s first basket off the game off a pass from fellow freshman Chase Beighley, who had nine points, four rebounds and four assists, with 3:11 to go in the first quarter that gave Karns City a 12-10 lead, a lead it never relinquished.
“I think the big key tonight was hustle plays,” Bellis said. “Nathan is a guy who came in as a freshman but assimilated very quickly. Tonight, he just outworked them.”
The Gremlins led 19-14 after a quarter and built the lead to 25-18 early in the second quarter before C-L got 3-pointers from Deion Deas, who hit four triples in the game for his 12 points, and Hayden Callen, another freshman who had a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds, to close within one, 25-24, with just under five minutes left in the half.
But Karns City ended the half on a 9-0 run to push the lead to 10-, 34-24, at halftime with Austin Fahlor scoring the final five points of the half on his way to 15 in the game.
The lead continued to stay between eight and 13 points throughout the third quarter with the Gremlins going up 11, 51-40, after three.
C-L tried to fight back in the fourth with Ian Callen hitting two quick baskets to cut the deficit to nine, 53-44, with 6:19 to play. Callen’s hoop at the 6:19 mark gave him 1,000 career points.
But just 27 seconds after Callen reached the milestone he took a hard tumble to the ground clutching his shoulder and had to come out of the game.
After being checked out by the Karns City athletic trainer, Callen, who finished with 16 points and nine rebounds, returned the bench but didn’t come back into the game.
C-L head coach Joe Ferguson said if the game had been closer — by the time Callen returned to the bench area Karns City had expanded the lead to 15 — the junior could have returned.
“I made the decision on my own,” Ferguson said. “He is capable of playing. But I told him, I am not taking a chance with it being a 10- or 12-point lead. It wasn’t worth it.”
Christian Smith tried to shoot C-L back into the game, but the senior’s efforts were just a little too late. Smith did hit a pair of late 3-pointers and finished with 15 points.
CHRIS’ THOUGHTS
1. C-L did a nice job on Beighley, Karns City’s leading scorer, but the Gremlins had other weapons.
C-L did a really nice job on Beighley holding the Gremlins leading scorer to nine points, his fewest output in eight games, but Karns City had too many other weapons with Waltman and Fahlor and Nolan Riley (8 points, 14 rebounds) and Logan Pistorius (8 points).
“That’s a really good sign for our team,” Bellis said. “If (Chase) doesn’t get to double figures, we have a couple of other guys who can get there. We have had seven different guys in double figures this year. We have gotten contributions from a lot of different places.”
2. Karns City shared the ball well.
The Gremlins had 13 assists on 26 baskets led by four from Beighley and three from Jacob Friel. Bellis said that continued a trend for his team.
“It just shows our team is starting to understand how to draw a defender and then find a teammate,” Bellis said. “We have been driving and kicking well lately and sharing the basketball well lately. It is good to see, but it is not a big surprise. Our kids are coming together at the right time.
3. The Gremlins long-range game was the difference in the first half.
Karns City built its 10-point halftime lead on the strength of six first-half 3-pointers and hit eight triples in the game.
“It’s really not by design,” Bellis said. “But when a team has a little bit of a size advantage on you and is playing a zone, you have to knock down shots. They were playing some triangle-and-two to start the game and some box-and-one. Eventually, you are going to have to knock down an outside shot when they are packing the paint with some guys that are a little bit bigger.”
Ferguson said the home team’s 3-point barrage early falls partly on him.
“We knew they shot it,” Ferguson said. “We worked on trying to contain the paint, but we didn’t get out. Our defensive effort was not good. The bottom line is, I didn’t have the kids prepared on defense to get out plus stop the dribble penetration.
4. Falling behind early is a trend for C-L.
Ferguson pointed out that getting behind early has been pretty much a season-long trend for the Lions, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“We are used to it because we have been doing it all season,” Ferguson said. “It’s not fun. Any game we start out where we can get the lead, it seems like we can put the teams down the same they did to us tonight. It was a struggle trying to get back into the game.”
5. Did Keystone win or did Keystone lose?
The Panthers didn’t even play Wednesday night but the outcome of the game in Karns City had some major impacts on them and it’s hard to say if they were winners or losers with the outcome.
If Karns City had lost, Keystone would have returned to the KSAC Title Game with a chance to defend their crown from last year.
But, with the C-L loss, if my math is correct (and I am a writer, not a mathematician) Keystone could now end up with the third seed in the District 9 Class 2A playoff pushing C-L to the fourth with Clarion in at the fifth.
So, while they won’t get a chance to defend their conference crown, the Panthers could be in a better position to advance in the District 9 postseason, which I am sure head coach Greg Heath and his players would take any day over the conference title.
THE OUTCOME
Karns City moved to 16-6 on the year and clinched the KSAC South thanks to a tiebreaker over Keystone. The tiebreaker was how each team did against North Clarion, the KSAC North runner-up. Because the Gremlins and Panthers split their regular-season series and won all of their other games against the KSAC South it then moved to how they did against the top team from the North, C-L. With Karns City’s win, both teams beat C-L meaning it moved to how they did against the second-place team from the North. That is where Karns City won out having beaten North Clarion at North Clarion while Keystone lost at home to the Wolves last week.
C-L had already secured the North title and the loss dropped the Lions to 16-6 as well.
THE ROAD AHEAD
The teams meet again in less than 48 hours in the KSAC Title Game with tip-off for the boys’ game set for 6 p.m. at Clarion University’s Tippin Gym. Both teams then will advance to the District 9 playoffs with C-L in Class 2A and Karns City in Class 3A.
KARNS CITY 66, CLARION-LIMESTONE 54
Score by Quarters
Clarion-Limestone 14 10 16 14 — 54
Karns City 19 15 17 15 — 66
CLARION-LIMESTONE — 54
Deion Deas 4 0-0 12, Julian Laugand 0 0-0 0, Ian Callen 7 2-3 16, Kyle Kerle 0 0-0 0, Nick Cyphert 0 0-0 0, Christian Smith 5 3-4 15, Ian Hawthorn 0 0-0 0, Hayden Callen 5 0-0 11. Totals 21 5-7 54.
KARNS CITY — 66
Austin Fahlor 6 1-1 15, Chase Beighley 3 1-2 9, Logan Pistorius 3 0-0 8, Nolan Riley 4 0-0 8, Jacob Friel 2 0-0 5, Ethan McElroy 1 0-0 3, Nathan Waltman 7 4-5 18. Totals 26 6-8 66.
Three-pointers:Clarion-Limestone 7 (Deas 4, Smith 2, H. Callen 1). Karns City 8 (Fahlor 2, Beighley 2, Pistorius 2, Friel, McElroy).
Rebounding: Clarion-Limestone 10 offensive, 20 defensive, 30 total (Hayden Callen 10, Ian Callen 9). Karns City 14 offensive, 27 defensive, 41 total (Riley 14, Waltman 7).
