The Lady Bisons battled St. Marys in a pair of four-point losses during the regular season, but the Lady Dutch had Clearfield's number in a dominating 56-28 win in the District 9 Class AAA title game.

The Lady Bisons will play in a play-in game to see if they make the PIAA tournament, while St. Marys clinched a spot with the win.

Whether it was the big stage of playing on a college campus or the torrid shooting of Kayla Hoohuli and Co. early in the first quarter, Clearfield found itself in a 10-0 hole and was unable to respond.

"I don't know if it was the atmosphere or what," said Castagnolo, "but we just looked scared. We never got on the right track at all ... ever. We've played too much basketball to play like that.

"That was the first thing I said to them, ‘ girls, you picked a wrong time to play your worst game of the year, but you get to play Tuesday ... you get to make amends for it.'"

Hoohuli, who poured in 38 in a win on Jan. 16 in Clearfield, jumpstarted her team by converting a steal into a layup and knocking down a 3-pointer the next trip down the floor.

St. Marys' Amanda Simbeck and Megan Herbstritt combined for the next six points to put the Lady Bisons in a double-digit hole with 5:29 showing on the clock.

Simbeck didn't start in either regular-season matchup and totaled just nine points in the meetings, but made a big impact on Saturday's game.

The St. Marys forward scored 10 points, six from the foul line, and pulled down a game-high 18 rebounds.

"We got beat on the offensive boards bad," Castagnolo said. "We needed those to stop their runs. We needed those rebounds, and we just had a total breakdown in every phase of the game."

A foul shot from Elizabeth Peters got Clearfield on the board with 4:55 left, and Madison Sopic followed with a 3-pointer to quickly make it a six-point game.

Hoohuli picked up her third foul of the opening quarter with 1:21 to go, and the Lady Bisons made a game of things.

Clearfield trailed 12-5 heading into the second, where a Jayme Ryan three pulled it to within three at 15-12 with 5:31 left in the half.

Unfortunately for the Lady Bisons, Hoohuli returned to the game after sitting out over four minutes and the Lady Dutch were able to put the game on ice from there.

St. Marys outscored Clearfield 9-1 the rest of the half to carry a 24-13 advantage into halftime.

"After Hoohuli got her third foul, I thought, ‘here's where we make our run,' " said Castagnolo. "I thought we'd play with some confidence - we still didn't. ... She sat out a lot of the quarter and we should've made our run.

"When Jayme hit that three I thought, ‘maybe we're going to get on a little bit of a roll.' We got the ball right back, but we missed a (shot)."

If the Lady Bisons had any hopes of making a comeback in the third, the Lady Dutch put it to rest by scoring 19 of the 26 points in the quarter.

St. Marys shot 9-of-19 from the floor in the stanza, while Clearfield continued to struggle after finishing the first half 3-of-23. The Lady Bisons equaled their field goals from the first half in the quarter, but still missed 13 shots.

The Lady Dutch defense was largely responsible for Clearfield's shooting woes, as a suffocating man-to-man defense forced the Lady Bisons into 26 turnovers.

"Their defense was much better," Castagnolo said. "They played us like Punxsy did and that surprised me."

In all, Clearfield shot 18.2 percent from the field in going 10-of-55.

The Lady Dutch fared a little better in going 21-for-72 with Hoohuli finishing 6-of-19 after making her first two buckets.

After totaling 65 points in the regular season against Clearfield, Hoohuli finished the third contest with a game-high 16.

Tia Cunningham also reached double digits for St. Marys, while Herbstritt narrowly missed with nine.

Gwenn Porter led the Lady Bisons with eight and Amber Byerly totaled six.

"They played as a team and they passed the ball well," Castagnolo said of St. Marys. "The other kids really picked up the slack with Hoohuli only scoring 16.

"I don't know what else to say. I can't take anything away from them. They were the way better team today."

Clearfield will face Franklin in the play-in game on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Franklin High School.

Clearfield-28
Porter 3 2-5 8, Kovalick 2 0-2 4, Ja. Ryan 1 0-0 3, Janocko 0 0-0 0, Sopic 1 0-0 3, Peters 0 1-4 1, Byerly 2 2-3 6, Zalno 0 1-2 1, Schultz 1 0-0 2, Moore 0 0-0 0. Totals: 10 6-16 28.

St. Marys-56
Hoohuli 6 3-5 16, Cunningham 4 0-0 10, Hathorn 3 0-0 6, Simbeck 2 6-10 10, Herbstritt 4 1-3 9, Pelgrin 0 1-4 1, Levenduski 0 0-0 0, C. Walker 1 0-0 2, Gerarge 0 0-0 0, R. Walker 1 0-0 2. Totals: 21 11-22 56.

Three-pointers: Ja. Ryan, Sopic; Cunningham 2, Hoohuli.

Score by Quarters
Clearfield                                  5            8          7            8-28
St. Marys                                 12          12        19           13-56