MILAN — Port Clinton had a date with history Saturday night, but the party took a bit longer than expected to get started.

After enduring a little patience in the opening eight minutes in its road game at Edison, the Redskins turned it up a notch defensively and outscored the Chargers by 26 points over the final three quarters in a 62-37 victory.

The win put the finishing touches on a perfect regular season for the Redskins (20-0, 14-0). 

On top of being the best record in school history, the unbeaten mark is the first 20-0 season in the Sandusky Bay Conference since St. Mary Central Catholic accomplished the feat on the way to a state championship in the 1979-80 season.

“I don’t know if anything has fully sunk in yet,” Port Clinton coach Troy Diels said. “It’s a tremendous accomplishment for our kids for some tough defeats they’ve had to face and some hard lessons learned the past few years. It’s a nice accomplishment for them.”

Edison coach Chris Ceccoli admitted the gameplan was to be deliberate on offense and spread the floor early, and it showed as the Chargers held a 10-9 lead at the end of the first quarter.

However, the Redskin trapping defense came to life, with the end result four turnovers on the Chargers first five possessions of the second quarter. When the smoke cleared, it was a 10-0 Port Clinton run and a 19-10 lead.

“In the first part of the game, we wanted to let it play out,” Diels said. “We turned up the pressure, started trapping a little more and were able to force that into some turnovers. That really seemed to spark us.”

The Redskins took the nine-point lead into halftime, but continued pouring it on in the second half in outscoring the hosts 39-16.

“Edison had turned their season around and have been playing really well this month,” Diels said. “With as much focus that was being put on this game, it was nice to get a win like that.

“Coach Ceccoli had his team very well prepared, but fortunately we were able to get a bit of a lead and that sort of took them out of their deliberate approach.”

Allen Tigner had an excellent game at point guard for the Redskins, scoring 16 points and dishing out 10 assists. Josh Francis led the ‘Skins in scoring with 19 points while Ryan Hicks added 17.

For Edison, Zach Yovanov scored 16 points and Ryan Reber added 12.

“I have to say congratulations to coach Diels and Port Clinton,” Ceccoli said. “They are doing great things with their program. We’ll put this one behind us and focus on the tournament.

“We ended up 5-1 in the month of February and we’ve started to show we can play more consistently. We feel like we match up well with Perkins, so we’ll see what happens. That’s what’s nice, everyone gets a second chance.”

Meanwhile, Port Clinton has a first-round bye at the Division II Sandusky sectional and awaits a third meeting with the winner of Perkins-Edison on Friday at 6:15 p.m.

“We’ll enjoy this now, but once Monday gets here we start fresh and new,” Diels said. “We’ll focus on starting to play quality basketball again.”