Photo by Nick Henthorn St. Clairsville’s Brady Schafer puts up a shot inside during the Red Devils’ road game against the Martins Ferry Purple Riders on Saturday.

MARTINS FERRY — St. Clairsville head coach Ryan Clifford may not have been happy with his team’s first half, but he wasn’t being picky about the results by the end of his Red Devils’ (6-2) 69-48 road victory over the Martins Ferry Purple Riders (3-7).

“Winning on the road is hard no matter where you’re playing,” Clifford said. “I wasn’t thrilled with our effort and energy in the first half, and we responded in the second half, a nice spurt to start the second half and we kind of got away from them.

“We’ll always take wins, they don’t have to be the prettiest thing. We messed up in some spots but it’s better to correct things after a win than a loss.”

Martins Ferry trailed by one basket, 16-14, after one quarter, and it remained a single-digit game going into the locker rooms with St. C. leading 34-25, but a scoring run fueled by turnovers and layups to start the third quarter pushed the game far into the Red Devils’ favor.

“Coming in, we thought we could pressure their guards,” Clifford said. “And that’s why I wasn’t happy with the way we played in the first half, I thought we didn’t give great pressure. Then we came out in the second half and we pressured. They turned it over, it led to easy run-outs and dunks, those got us going. It’s good to come down here and get a win.”

Tyson Pastor led all scorers with 20 points, making shots with an in-between game of pull-ups and push shots- and a couple of two-handed slam dunks on the day.

“He’s a two-time MVP for us for a reason,” Clifford said. “He has a real knack for finding the open spot in there, he makes that midrange jumper maybe better than anyone I’ve seen this year. He does a really good job of letting the game come to him, he doesn’t force it. When he’s open in there, he’s a bucket.”

Brady Schafer followed closely behind with 18 points, and Griffin Straub scored 14.

St. C. led 55-37 after the third quarter.

Martins Ferry’s Maurice Barnett led his team with 12 points, followed by Walkquem Cox’s 11 and Elijah Smith’s 10.

“I saw a lot of energy, a lot of fight, a lot of physicality from our players,” Martins Ferry head coach Derek Edwards said. “We’re on a pretty challenging stretch here, but we’re not thinking of it like that, we’re making it an opportunity to get a whole lot better as a group. I thought our players did that today even though it wasn’t in a winning effort.”

The Purple Riders were without their two leading scorers, Alex Reese and Anthony Booth, in the game. With younger players needing to step into larger roles, Martins Ferry wants to see growth during the two’s absence.

“Every day is an opportunity for growth for all of our players,” Edwards said. “I think our players are buying into that especially in these last few weeks. We have a sense of urgency to us, I like the way our players are responding in practice. Our team has an opportunity every day to get better and we’re going to keep doing that.”

St. Clairsville stays on the road for their next game at Bellaire on Jan. 7. Martins Ferry hits the road to play Monroe Central that same day.