BELLVILLE — When the Clear Fork Colts have a bad shooting night, the only way to deal with it is simple — just keep shooting.

They did that and more in a 62-43 win over Lexington on Wednesday night in nonconference action. Despite shooting 33% from the field for the game, the Colts still put 62 points on the scoreboard. How? By getting up as many shot attempts as they possibly could with a faster pace and offensive rebounding. The Colts attempted 80 shots and pulled down 30 offensive rebounds to overcome a cold night from the floor.

"When we play with that much pace and miss as many layups as we did, we are going to get that many shots," Clear Fork coach Scott Sellers said. "We have athletes and we want them to have fun. The way to break out of a shooting slump is to keep shooting. It wasn't efficient, but this is our style and we will continue to play like this."

And why change it? The Colts won their ninth game of the season, which is two more wins than they had all of last season, as they improved to 9-1 overall. After breaking out to a 25-13 lead at halftime, the Colts scored 27 points in the second half thanks to a tiny adjustment of not settling for 3-pointers, they were 5-for-19 from three, and mid-range jumpers. Instead, they wanted to make better passes and get to the rim.

Junior Lilly Wortman took that challenge to heart scoring 11 of her 13 points in the second half by getting to the rim. She also added nine rebounds.

"We were just trying to work on our passing because we kind of started flustered and were making some bad passes while also not knocking down shot," Wortman said. "We just tried to adjust and get to the rim for easier layups to finish."

Wortman also lead the team in minutes played with 25:12 as the Colts had seven players log 17 or more minutes. The consent subbing in fresh legs helped the Colts control the pace of the game by pushing the ball up the court on offense and playing a full-court trap defense.

"We play eight at 18 minutes at the low end and 25 minutes at the high end," Sellers said. "We sub a lot because a lot of it is matchup-based. We have confidence in those eight girls to play a lot of key minutes for us."

The two areas the Colts excelled in are two things they will hang their hats on down the stretch as they approach the second half of the season and continue their quest for their first league championship since 2004.

"Defense and pace," Sellers said. "Defensively, I don't think we played our best game by any stretch, but we did enough to win. I told the girls in the locker room, some of these games are very good to watch on film because while we didn't play our best game, there is a lot of stuff we can learn from tonight. We are approaching the meat of our league schedule with Shelby, River Valley again and Pleasant, games like this are good. It was a great atmosphere and Lex played very hard and made things difficult for us."

In the first half, Lexington kept Clear Fork close by holding them to 28% shooting from the field. Lady Lex didn't let senior Bekah Conrad get comfortable in the post and forced the Colts to settle for jumpers.

"I am proud of my girls because of the way they fought," Lexington coach Grant Weaver said. "We didn't play our best four quarters of basketball, but they battled and never quit. I am very pleased with that. We had some great looks at the beginning of the game, but they just weren't dropping. I thought we came in with a good game plan and executed it fairly well, not perfect. We wanted to play Bekah (Conrad) with a man and a half and drop off of No. 13 (Isabella Molina), but the first half score was the difference."

Conrad did get her own thanks to her rebounding. She scored 13 points for the game including eight in the first half and pulled down a staggering 19 rebounds, 10 in the first half. Lyvia Davis added 12 points and five steals for the Colts while Pacey Chrastina added eight, Annika Labaki had seven and Trinity Cook scored six with five steals.

"We didn't shoot it great and we didn't make the best decisions, but that is a credit to Lexington," Sellers said. "They knew what they wanted to take away and we adjusted to that at halftime. We played much better in the second half and picked up a quality win."

Lex (2-8) entered the fourth quarter trailing 42-26 and saw the Colts push it out to a 26-point lead early. After a timeout, Weaver challenged his team to not give up and get it back to within 20. After implementing a full-court defense and getting some leak-out buckets, Lady Lex achieved that goal.

"It turned into a little bit of a track meet more than I wanted to see, but we went into the fourth with everything to gain and nothing to lose," Weaver said. "I hate to watch games whither away so I asked the girls to dig deep and play from full-court pressure defense and it worked out for the most part. I am proud of them for finishing. We picked a little battle in the war and wanted to get it back under 20 points and we did that by finishing with pride."

Kaleigh Leadbetter led Lexington with 10 points and 11 rebounds for a solid double-double while Madi Basilone added nine points.

But in the end, Clear Fork's depth and pace were the difference in the game. Tough defense and high-tempo offense is quickly becoming Clear Fork's identity.

"Coach really works us on our conditioning because a high-pace of play is our identity," Wortman said. "We always want to come into the game and try and run them out of the gym. Our depth is a luxury because we know no matter who comes in for who, there won't be a drop in production. My teammates are ones I can count on."

Clear Fork travels to Fredericktown on Tuesday while Lexington hosts Wooster on Dec. 30.