Photo by Nick Henthorn Martins Ferry’s Maurice Barnett drives to the basket Tuesday during the Purple Riders’ OVAC 3A semifinal game against the Wheeling Central Maroon Knights.

WHEELING — The Wheeling Central Maroon Knights are moving on to defend their OVAC 3A championship.

Top-seeded Central (14-0) defeated No. 4 Martins Ferry (12-7) on Tuesday inside the Central Catholic Athletic Center, 81-58, in one leg of the OVAC 3A semifinals, led by a 36-point double-double from senior Eli Sancomb.

With the victory, the Maroon Knights will move on to face No. 3 Monroe Central, who defeated No. 2 Columbiana 80-48 on Tuesday. The championship bout on Saturday inside Ohio University Eastern’s ECO Center will be a rematch of last year’s OVAC Final.

“That’s one of our goals every year when we start, to get that top four, to be able to have a chance to advance to a championship game,” Wheeling Central head coach Mel Stephens said. “So, you know, we’ve taken that first step, and now we have to get ready for Saturday.”

Wheeling Central increased their lead after each quarter, never trailing Tuesday as four Knights scored at least nine points.

“We had moments, obviously there were stretches where they strung some possessions together, made some perimeter shots,” Martins Ferry head coach Derek Edwards said. “Their role players really stepped up tonight. Obviously a lot of attention goes to 11 [Eli Sancomb], rightfully so, he’s one heck of a player. But, there were moments in a game where we had it down to a couple possessions, but we didn’t make smart plays and they capitalized on it, and hey, that’s why they’re 13-0. They were situationally a lot better than us. But this is something we can build off of. I liked our fight tonight.”

With Sancomb scoring at a hellacious clip, there was no slowing down the Central offense, who scored over 20 points in three of Tuesday’s four quarters. Wheeling Central led 15-9 after the first quarter and 39-28 at halftime.

The Knights kept the pedal down in the second half.

“We talked about it at halftime– I thought the first half, we’d go on a little bit of a run and then they would answer that run with a run of their own and get back into the game,” Stephens said. “We kind of challenged them at a half time to get out and run and try to keep that run going and then try to minimize their runs in the second half, which I think we did a pretty good job.”

Eli Sancomb grabbed 12 rebounds, blocked two shots and dished six assists to go with his 36 points.

“I thought the Monroe game, the Linsly game, he still had great games, but I didn’t think he let the game come to him as much. Tonight I think he did that a little bit better, let the game come to him, got other guys involved when they were open, and that makes us a better team by far.”

Max Olejasz scored 17 points with six rebounds and two blocks, and Luke Sancomb scored 13.

Nico Kusic scored nine and was a pest on defense, picking up his assignment full court and racking up five steals.

It was one of several defensive performances that Stephens wanted to shout out.

“He did a tremendous job,” Stephens said of Kusic. “I thought, him on [Gavin] Little, I thought Max on [Anthony] Booth, and Eli on [Elijah] Smith, I thought those were the three guys that we definitely had to take away. The other two kids are good players too, but, we thought we had a pretty good game plan for them too, and we just wanted to make it tough for them to score, make them shoot contested shots and then box out and rebound.”

Smith and Maurice Barnett each scored 15 to lead Martins Ferry, Smith grabbing six rebounds with two blocks.

“That’s what we expect out of them,” Edwards said of the pair. “I thought at times in the game, our spacing and our motion was pretty good, but they’re sticky on defense, obviously they got a lot of length, so we had a hard time getting Booth going. They did a nice job of putting length on him. At the end of the day, I liked our fight. I thought we took a step forward tonight– I know it doesn’t look like it in the scoring column. We’ve still got a road to go here, so we’re going to keep going.”

Gavin Little scored nine and Walkquem Cox scored eight for Ferry.

The Purple Riders will now compete in the 3A third-place game against Columbiana later this week.