RUNNING WILD — Indian Creek’s Mackenzie Orban drives to the hoop past Brooke’s Marissa Elliott in an OVAC consolation game on Thursday. (Photo by Joe Catullo)

WINTERSVILLE — It is often said that the third time is a charm. It was for the Indian Creek girls Thursday night as they downed Brooke for the third time this season, 53-44, at the Indian Creek Fieldhouse.

The win gives the Redskins, which had the top seed in Class 5A, third place in the 11th-annual Wheeling Hospital OVAC Basketball Tournament. The Bruins were the second seed in the four-team field.

While the third time wasn’t a charm for Ryan Scherich’s girls, they did a good job of cutting the margin of loss down to single digits. Indian Creek beat the Bruins 55-41 on Jan. 22 and 64-35 on Feb. 1.

“With both teams coming off of tough losses in the first round of the tournament, I thought it was a really good game,” said victorious coach Jackie Rossi, whose Redskins now are 17-4. “Our girls really turned it on at the end, and I think that was the difference.”

Both teams were a little out of sync in the first quarter as they combined for 15 turnovers. The lead went back and forth in the first half, with the Lady Redskins getting to the break with a one point lead at 22-21.

Indian Creek stretched the lead to 38-33 going into the fourth quarter and put it away with a 7-0 run to start the final 8 minutes. The Lady Redskins held their widest lead of 12 points at 51-39 on freshman Taylor Jones’ two free throws with 49 seconds left in the game.

Brooke’s Hope Bowman, who led her team with 12 points, converted an old- fashioned three with a layup and foul to reduce the Indian Creek margin to 7 points at the 15-second mark, but it was a case of too little, too late.

“We played hard and sometimes when you do that you can be too aggressive and allow the other team to get offensive rebounds and eventually they are going to convert some of those into points,” Scherich said. “We didn’t feel that Indian Creek was a real good shooting team from outside so our game plan going in was to pack the defense in and it worked pretty well in the first half.

“When they share the ball as we did most of the time tonight, they play better,” Scherich said of his team, which now is 12-7. “Sometimes, though, we go down the floor and get a little bit selfish.”

Brooke sophomore Ashley Arca, who is nursing a rib injury, was not available to play in the semifinal OVAC loss to Parkersburg South Monday, but she played Thursday and her ball handling helped to reduce the number of Brooke turnovers from 26 to 18, and she added nine points, two steals, two assists and two offensive rebounds. Bowman, a 6-3 junior, had another double-double with her 12 points and 10 rebounds. She was near a triple-double as she also blocked eight shots.

Jones was matched up against Bowman most of the game and she also recorded a double-double scoring a game-high 14 points, corralling 10 rebounds and added three blocked shots.

“Brooke was taking away a lot of our inside shooting in the first half with a 6-3 girl in there,” Rossi explained. “We went with a four out offense in the second half and it seemed to really spread out their zone and it kind of made the difference. We changed it up to try to get a little more scoring and it seemed to work.

“Bowman is solid from the foul line and she made 8-of-9 from the line so we held her to just two field goals. I thought Taylor Jones did a really good job of defending her. She’s just a freshman and she led us offensively, too. Our juniors Ashley Yaich scored 11 points and Kacie Vanderborne had 10.

“And, we hit our foul shots down the stretch when we were trying to hold the ball and they were fouling us. I thought we did a really good job.”

Indian Creek will play its last regular season game Monday at St. Clairsville and then will have a 12-day layoff until it starts sectional tournament play.

Brooke now is 12-7 and also gets back into regular season action with a visit to Big Red Monday.

Game notes:

¯ The Indian Creek jayvees made it a sweep with a 45-13 win in the preliminary. MacKenzie Taylor led the Redskins with 13 points, while Ally Palmer had six for the Bruins.

Indian Creek 53, Brooke 44

Brooke 9-12-12-11 — 44

Indian Creek 11-11-16-15 — 53

BROOKE (12-7); Fox 2 0-0 4; A. Arca 4 1-4 9; J. Arca 2 0-0 6; Dodson 1 0-1 2; Elliott 1 0-0 2; C. Byers 0 1-2 1; Edgar 4 0-0 8; Bowman 2 8-9 12. TOTALS: 16 10-16 44. Three-pointers: 2 (J. Arca 2); Rebounds: 26 (Bowman 10): Turnovers: 19.

INDIAN CREEK (17-4); Cooper 3 0-2 6; Kiger 3 0-0 7; Yaich 5 1-3 11; Vanderborne 2 6-6 10; Jones 5 4-6 14; Orban 2 0-0 5. TOTALS: 20 11-17 53. 3-POINT GOALS: 2 (Kiger, Orban); Rebounds 26 (Jones 10); Turnovers 11.