Chris Blake’s inside moves helped the Cougars to victory. Photo by John Albright

By the way things are going in District 28-5A, Clark boys’ basketball coach Kevin Hamilton believes it is still early to start worrying about the standings.

That concern might still be two or three weeks down the road. When league race reaches that point, Hamilton is hoping his Cougars are in a good enough position to where they don’t have to do any standing watching.

Going into the final week of Round One, Clark (16-8, 4-3) sits in fourth place behind leader Taft (20-6, 6-0), Warren (19-6, 5-2) and Stevens (16-5, 4-2).

The determining factor for Clark gaining one of 28-5A’s playoff spots depends on how the Cougars handle the upcoming tests.

“It’s still hard to figure things out at this point,” said Hamilton, whose Cougars play Holmes at 6:30 p.m. Friday at Paul Taylor Fieldhouse. “I think the teams who are going to make it through are the teams who can handle adversity. Every team is going to go through it. We are sitting in pretty good shape, but if we have a loss, we have to come back and get ready for the next one.”

Clark showed it could do just that this past week. After dropping a 46-40 contest to Taft this past Thursday, the Cougars recovered two days later with a 72-53 thumping of Jay.

Although Clark ended up with a convincing victory, it took a second-half scoring surge for that to happen.

Jay (10-12, 3-3), paced by Jerwan Crawford’s 18 points and Antwan Johnsons’ 12 points, led most of the first half. However, the momentum turned in Clark’s favor during the final minute.

Dermon Smith, who scored 10 of his 13 points in the first half, sank a three-pointer following Jon Shaw’s block. Second later, Elhad Emerllahu added another three, pushing Clark to a 32-26 halftime lead.

Jay came back with a three-pointer from Marcus McGown at the beginning of the third quarter, but the Cougars started rolling, thanks to Jordan Brickman.

Brickman (16 points) scored 13 of Clark’s 19 points during that span, helping the Cougars increase its advantage to 51-39.

Chris Blake (16 points) followed Brickman’s cue in the fourth period, putting in 13 points with his inside moves in building a 70-47 advantage,

“We were a little sloppy at the beginning,” Hamilton said. “It seemed like we were a step slow on offense and defense. You have to give a lot of credit to Jay. They were able to get the ball up and down the court. Fortunately for us, we made our shots in the second half.”