IN THE AIR — Catholic Central’s Benji Rook shoots a jumper past Madonna’s Brayden Miller during Monday’s game. - Andrew Grimm

WEIRTON — Coming off the thrill of winning the school’s first OVAC title in more than three decades and with the East District tournament about to begin, Catholic Central head coach Don Ogden did not want his team to have a let down or start looking ahead Monday night when they traveled to take on Madonna.

While his Crusaders did not get off to their best start and made some mistakes early, they got dialed in and pulled away from a young Blue Dons squad for a 79-42 victory inside the Dube Dome.

“Coming off a big, emotional win, you never know what you’re going to get, they’re teenagers … we started out a little slow,” Ogden said. “We got going, maybe we didn’t have our best display of execution but we did what we had to do to win and we’ll take it. We won by 37 points, but as a coach you’re always looking for things we could do better.

“My hat’s off to coach Arlia and his team, they have a lot of adversity right now and a lot of guys out and they played really hard. They were scrappy and didn’t back down one bit, so kudos to them.”

After the Dons (6-13) knotted the score at six-all midway through the first quarter, the Crusaders (19-3) closed the opening quarter on a 12-1 run. In the second, after Madonna had started to match bucket for bucket and was keeping up, Central again went on a run, this time 9-0, to lead 39-21 at the break.

It was one last, big run that spanned through the end of the third and start of the fourth that really pushed out the lead to as many as 40 as Central rattled of the last 12 points of the third quarter and extended that run to 17 straight and all the way to 29-4 before some late buckets from Madonna.

Though the score did end up getting away from there, first-year Blue Dons coach Matt Arlia saw some encouraging things from his line up that starts multiple freshmen in the midst of dealing with injuries and other adversity.

“We told our guys we were happy with the effort, I thought we had a tremendous effort,” Arlia said. “There were points in that game we only had one guy on the floor who’s old enough to drive, so we’re very youthful. We hope that they’re able to learn from playing a good team like that.

“There’s a lot to take away from that game for us. Coach Ogden does a great job and they’re a great team, they’re OVAC champs and we wish them the best of luck in their tournament.

“Four our guys, we’re just trying to get better each quarter, each day, each practice.”

Central was led by a 25-point day from Camden Bradley, while Rahim Mitchell tallied 16 points and Benji Rook netted 12.

For Madonna, Connor Carte had a strong day netting 21 points.

The Crusaders are now on to the Division VII, East District tournament, in which they are the top seed. They open their run by hosting fourth-seeded Strasburg at 7 p.m. on Friday night.

“I heard someone once say every team but one will end their season with a loss, so now every game could be that last game and we have to give it our all,” Ogden said.

Madonna has some regular season business left to handle as it is back in action Friday taking on Weir High in the annual city championship game.

Catholic Central 79, Madonna 42

CC 18-21-20-20 – 79

M 7-14-6-15 – 79

CATHOLIC CENTRAL (19-3): Rook 5 0-0 12; Mihalyo 1 0-0 2; Pergi 3 1-1 7; Bradley 9 2-3 25; Rohde 3 1-1 7; Mitchell 8 0-0 16; Krupp 0 0-0 0; Ramsbel 2 1-1 6; McInnis 3 0-01 6

MADONNA (6-13): Miller 2 1-2 5; Carte 8 4-5 21; Fuscsrdo 2 3-3- 7; Cantebury 2 0-0 6; Wi gett 1 0-0 3, Gray 0 0-0 0; Snodgrass  0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 15, 8-10; 42.

3-POINT GOALS: Catholic Central 3 (Rook 2, Rambsel 1); Madonna 4 (Cantrbury 2, Wimgett, Carte)