Martin opened district basketball tournament play Monday night with a 63-43 victory over Battle Creek Calhoun Christian.

The triumph lifted the Clippers’ season record to 12-9 overall and into the district semifinals at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday against tourney host Battle Creek St. Phillip.

The Clippers started the game on a 7-0 run before Calhoun was able to score on a free throw.

“We were comfortable for most of the quarter but got a little too comfortable and CC was able to make a run on us late in the first by knocking down three threes and a handful of twos along with five free throws to finish the quarter,” coach David Curry said.

But his team was able to keep the lead, though it was only by two, 24-22.

Martin was able to get the ball in to scoring leader Tanner Curry on the block in the second period and let him go to work. He ended up scoring 21 of the team’s 44 points in the first half and the Clippers took a 44-29 lead into the locker room. They stretched the lead to 20 points to start the third and tried to keep starters off the floor as much possible for most of the second half.

“The kids who came in off the bench did a really good job of running our offense and protecting that 20-point lead for the remainder of the game,” Curry said. 

“We did not start out the game rebounding as well as we normally do but it seemed to get better as the game wore on,” the coach added. “Our defense was a little sloppy early on and it ended up getting our guards in some foul trouble. We weren’t rotating on the weak side and got caught on some dumps inside too. We did get that stuff fixed and was better in the second half as we held them to 14 points.

“It wasn’t a pretty win by no means but the main thing is we did win and advance to the semis… We will definitely have to tighten things up on both ends of the floor if we want to advance to the finals.”

Tanner Curry collected 28 points, Carter Hilton had 9 and Cayden Curry 8. Tanner Curry also had four steals and four assists.