Tigers rally to advance to semis
Two regular season matchups were not enough to determine superiority in the girls basketball rivalry between Northern Lehigh and Northwestern Lehigh as the team’s split the series.
So it made sense that 32 minutes wouldn’t be enough in Saturday afternoon’s rubber match in the Colonial League girls basketball playoffs at Northwestern Lehigh High School.
Northwestern’s Olivia Reinhart dominated the extra period, just as she dominated the offensive glass the entire game, to lead the Tigers to a 51-45 overtime victory in the third and final meeting between the two teams.
“I just wanted to go out there and make sure I boxed out to get more rebounds because last game I didn’t have as many,” Reinhart said.
The offensive rebounding clinic the Tigers put on was a complete flip of last week’s script when the Bulldogs secured 18 offensive rebounds en route to a 65-47 win on the very same court.
Northwestern coach Chris Deutsch’s group wasted no time showing that this game would be different by pulling down four offensive rebounds on the first possession of the game and 10 in the opening quarter. The second-chance opportunities kept Deutsch’s team in the game until the shots started to fall.
“It was something that was brought up in practice that we’ve been working on the last couple of days and it paid off,” Deutsch said. “We were relentless on the boards and I was really proud of the effort from the girls.”
Northwestern still couldn’t convert offensively despite its dominance on the glass, which allowed the Lady Bulldogs to race out to a 22-14 lead midway through the second quarter. Freshman guard Teegan Simms scored 10 of those points and it was her steal and layup in transition that forced a timeout by the Tigers.
Reinhart helped to stop the bleeding and with a couple of layups, cut the lead to 24-22 heading into halftime.
Northern Lehigh stole the momentum out of halftime and built the lead back up to seven with time winding down in the third.
That’s when one of the league’s best 3-point shooters, Emma Freeman, finally saw one of her shots fall.
It didn’t take long for her to drain another.
“Our motto is to let it fly. Even on a night when the shots aren’t falling, let it fly,” Deutsch said. “She kept shooting and hit some big threes for us.”
Junior guard Brook Balliet, who also struggled to get things going offensively, took Freeman’s momentum for herself and made some pivotal plays in the fourth quarter for the Tigers.
The first was a backbreaker for the Bulldogs as a defensive rebound, which was as rare as sunlight this winter, was immediately stolen by the junior and turned into a layup that gave Northwestern its first lead of the night, 37-36.
Balliet then pulled down a rebound and went coast-to-coast at blazing speed, making another layup through contact to put the Tigers up by three.
“Brook had a big couple of possessions in the fourth and I was just really proud of the way we matched their intensity tonight. We got outworked by them last time,” Deutsch said. “We didn’t get outworked tonight.”
AfterAubreyPollardandSimms tied the game up twice in the final minute, Reinhart scored the first four points of overtime on two excellent set plays that gave the Tigers a lead they never relented in the extra four minutes.
Cara Thomas, who uncharacteristically airballed a free throw earlier in the game, put her struggles behind her and clinched the contest at the charity stripe in the final seconds.
“I wasn’t having success earlier in the game so I just had to put those earlier shots behind me and take one shot at a time,” Thomas said.
Northwestern will now get another opportunity to face No. 1 Palmerton, who defeated them by double digits in both meetings this season. Deutsch knows the game will have to look a lot different than it did tonight if his team is going to pull off the upset.
“Palmerton’s an outstanding defensive team, so we’re going to have to find ways to generate some points,” he said. “Defensively, if we can keep playing with the kind of effort we got tonight, we’ll give ourselves a chance.”