ST. CLAIRSVILLE’S Avery Henry prepares to go up for a shot as Cambridge’s Davion Jeffrey goes up high to attempt to block the shot during Wednesday’s game inside the Gene Ford Gymnasium. Henry scored 25 points to lead the Devils to an 81-57 victory, which is the 1,000th in their program’s history.

CAMBRIDGE – It seemed like St. Clairsville had been waiting on win number 1,000 in program history for weeks, if not months.

The way Wednesday night’s game inside the Gene Ford Gymnasium at Cambridge High School started, it looked like the Red Devils were going to continue to play the waiting game, too.

Instead, after finding themselves down by 11 at halftime, head coach Ryan Clifford and his squad had a “heart to heart” conversation inside their locker room.

It clearly worked because St. Clairsville played maybe its best half of basketball to date in blitzing the Bobcats to a tune of 53-20 in the second half for an 81-57 victory.

“We lost Saturday (at Barnesville) because of the way we guarded. We could have lost Friday (to Bellaire) because of how we guarded and that’s how we guarded again in the first half (Tuesday),” St. Clairsville head coach Ryan Clifford said. “It comes down to taking some pride on yourself to guard your guy and play with more energy than they played with and we did that in the second half.”

St. Clairsville will formally celebrate its 1,000th victory at its next home game, which is scheduled for Feb. 2 against Wheeling Central.

“We thought we would have had that 1,000th by now,” Clifford laughed. “It’s special because it symbolizes all of the guys who have played here before.”

The Red Devils created some opportunities for themselves early in the second half by going to a full-court press. Cambridge turned the ball over multiple times, many of which were of the live-ball variety and led to early scoring chances.

All told, St. Clairsville opened the third quarter with a 14-0 run. Many of those points came from senior center Avery Henry, who scored early and often en route to a game-high 25 points.

“We’ve been hit or miss with that pressure, but we ran into some sickness and backed up. Plus, we’re not playing a lot of guys, so we’ve had to throttle back a little bit, but I thought our pressure and athleticism would be this team’s calling card,” Clifford continued.

Cambridge was never able to recover from that early onslaught. St. C. finished the third by scoring the final seven.

Along with Henry, who scored 14 in the third, classmate Ryan McCort went for 10 and senior Carson Woodford scored all five of his points in the period as well.

The Devils’ surge continued into the fourth when they scored 12 of the period’s first 14. Sparking that rally was the sharpshooting of sophomore Cole Thoburn. He scored 10 of his 16 in the opening couple of minutes of the fourth.

“The key to the second half was the way we started on offense,” Clifford said. “We went into Avery early in the third and that opened it up for the other guys. Ryan and Cole are knock-down shooters.”

Freshman Tyson Pastor continues to make strides and become a consistent contributor. He finished with nine points off the bench.

Henry’s scoring was just one of the way he’s impacted the game. He also collected 13 rebounds and blocked five shots.

Cambridge was led by Levin Polasky. He came off the bench to score 19.

The Red Devils return to the court Saturday when they trek to Beaver Local to take on East Liverpool in the Buckeye 8 championship game. It marks the fourth straight season the Devils and Potters have claimed the south and north division titles, respectively.