KARNS CITY — It was a playoff preview that the Karns City boys basketball team would rather erase.

Not much went right for the Gremlins, especially in the second half, against Clarion in their final regular season game Wednesday night.

They shot poorly, were clumsy with the ball and squandered leads of 10 and seven points in a 55-47 loss to the Bobcats, a team they will likely face again next week in the District 9 playoffs.

“Just not a good night overall,” said Karns City coach Chris Bellis. “When we did what we talked about it worked,” Bellis said. “We just didn't do it very often. I thought we had guys forcing shots.”

Karns City did enough to build a five point lead at the half and pushed that advantage to 36-26 just a minute into the third quarter.

It didn't hold up.

Clarion went on a 9-0 run to cut it to one, but it looked like the Gremlins were going to settle and recover.

Karns City (13-8) extended the lead to 42-35 before the bottom fell out.

Clarion (14-8) closed the game with 20-5 run to win the rematch of a game Karns City took earlier in the season.

Bobcats' coach Scott Fox said he couldn't have been more pleased with his team's fight.

“They've been working hard all year,” Fox said. “Earlier in the year, we did, we gave up when we got down to them.”

Not this time around.

Cal German scored 23 points to lead the Bobcats and the defense kept Karns City out of sorts in the second half.

“We played a lot more aggressive in the second half than we did in the first half,” Fox said. “We've preached all year about holding teams under 50 points. When it was 42-42 after three, we knew we had some work to do and we responded.”

Karns City shot just 16-of-59 from the floor, an uncharacteristically poor night for the Gremlins.

Chase Beighley, who came in averaging 25 points per game, was held to 12 — only three in the second half.

Ethan McElroy also scored 12 and Nathan Waltman added 11 to pace Karns City.

The good news for the Gremlins is they'll most likely get another shot at the Bobcats.

Bellis, though, isn't happy to have another week off.

Karns City will have played just one game in 15 days before the start of the playoffs.

“I'd rather not have that much downtime,” Bellis said. “We're allowed to scrimmage, but I'm not sure if we'll find the right fit for that. We'll see.”

CLARION 55

Cal German 11-22 0-1 23, Hunter Craddock 2-8 0-0 4, Josh Craig 1-3 0-0 3, Skylar Rhoades 4-7 0-0 9, Nick Frederick 5-8 3-5 14, Beau Verdill 1-1 0-0 2, Kyle Porciello 0-0 0-0 0. Totals: 24-49 3-6 55.

KARNS CITY 47

Chase Beighley 4-19 2-2 12, Caiden Corbett 1-9 0-0 3, Ethan McElroy 4-10 0-0 12, Luke Garing 0-2 0-0 0, Nathan Waltman 5-9 1-1 11, Daunte Young 0-2 0-0 0, Logan Fleeger 0-0 0-0 0, Micah Rupp 2-5 2-3 6, Eric Booher 0-3 0-0 0. Totals: 16-59 5-6 47.

Clarion 12 14 16 13 — 55

Karns City11 20 11 5 — 47

3-point goals: Clarion 4 (German, Craig, Rhoades, Frederick); Karns City 7 (Beighley 2, Corbett, McElroy 4)

TBD: Karns City in District 9 playoffs