CLARION — Charlie Breindel wasn’t backing down after his team gave up 21 points to Farrell in the first quarter of their second-round PIAA playoff game Friday night.

And neither were his Elk County Catholic Crusaders teammates. The numbers certainly proved that as the Crusaders held the District 10 champions to 32 points the rest of the way in a 65-53 win at Clarion University’s Tippin Gymnasium.

Breindel scored 28 points, sparking the Crusaders (24-5) into Wednesday’s quarterfinals against WPIAL runner-up Union-New Castle, which dumped District 6 champion Bishop Carroll, 49-28. Of course, it’ll be a site and time to be determined this weekend.

Of those 28, Breindel scored 12 points in the third quarter which saw the Crusaders turn a 26-25 halftime lead into an eight-point lead to start the fourth quarter. The Crusaders extended to their largest lead at 62-46 with 1:14 left in the game.

But it was the Crusaders withstanding the Steelers’ hot start shooting as they were 10-for-14 in the first quarter for a seven-point, 21-14, first quarter lead.

“Farrell is a great team. You can’t take anything away from them. They’re athletic. It was just our will. We want to win,” said Breindel, who hit 7-of-12 of his shots and converted 9-of-11 free throws. “We were going to try to give it to them and we’re giving it our all every game and that’s something as senior, you’re trying to lead this team and you see it in the juniors and sophomores, that’s what you want. To get that, it means the world to the seniors.”

The Crusaders really didn’t shoot it that well out of the gate as they were 5-for-13 from the floor in the first, but after that, they could hardly miss, making 15-of-24 from the field in what’s really not surprising — Crusaders playoff execution, which also saw them hit 20-of-25 free throws and commit just 10 turnovers. They wound up shooting 54 percent (20-for-37) for the game.

“We beat a really good team. They have some tremendous athletes and their point guard is one of the best players in District 10,” said Crusaders head coach Aaron Straub. “He played that way tonight and we had a tough time staying in front of him. Fortunately, we made a bunch of free throws down the stretch and I thought the other thing we did well tonight was that we did a pretty good job handling the basketball and we didn’t have a whole lot of turnovers.”

The Steelers (15-10) seemed to have the game going exactly as they wanted. Their point guard, Lamont Samuels, scored eight of his team-high 17 points in the first quarter, but after the first quarter virtually nothing went in off the hands of Samuels — he was 2-for-11 the rest of the game — and not much more found the bottom of the net by the rest of the team as Farrell shot 8-for-42 after the first quarter.

Straub wasn’t taking credit for the Steelers’ shooting woes.

“They just came out and made a bunch of shots and we tweaked a little bit and didn’t do a whole lot. We tried to step out a little bit more and get out more, but they played lights out in the first quarter,” Straub said. “We went into it with the idea that we wanted to gap and take away their penetration because they rely on penetration and getting the rebound off that, so we felt we needed to do a really good job of staying in front and doing a good job rebounding. We did that, but they shot the ball well.

“But the most impressive thing about tonight is when they scored 21 and they looked like world-beaters and we didn’t flinch and that’s a credit to our team.”

While the Steelers were missing everything in the second, Breindel’s triple put the Crusaders up for good at 24-23 with 3:13 left before halftime.

An 11-4 run to start the third, put the Crusaders up 37-29 — Breindel hit one of two technical free throws after Farrell coach Myron Lowe was whistled for the tech — at the 4:50 mark. Farrell got it to 37-32 30 seconds later on Kabron Smith’s three, but that’s as close as it would get the rest of the way.

Luke Jansen and Adam Straub scored 13 and 11 points respectively for the Crusaders. Jordan Wasko scored three points, but grabbed a team-high eight rebounds.

Nasir O’Kane added 11 points for Farrell while Omar Stewart scored seven points and finished with eight rebounds. Malachi Owens scored seven points with nine rebounds.

AT CLARION

Charlie Breindel 7 9-11 28, Adam Straub 3 5-6 11, Michael Jacobs 4 0-0 8, Jordan Wasko 1 1-2 3, Luke Jansen 4 5-6 13, Colby Nussbaum 1 0-0 2, James Foradora 0 0-0 0, Ke Kang 0 0-0 0, Wil Wortman 0 0-0 0, Noah Cherry 0 0-0 0. Totals:

Farrell 53Malachi Owens 2 3-5 7, Lamont Samuels 5 7-10 17, Omar Stewart 3 1-2 7, Nasir O’Kane 3 1-1 8, Kabron Smith 4 0-0 11, Kylon Wilson 1 0-2 3, Jesean Boatwright 0 0-0 0, Allen Mychael Jackson 0 0-0 0. Totals:

3-pointers: Farrell 5 (O’Kane, Smith 3, Wilson), ECC 5 (Breindel 5)