After five days off, the Emmaus girls basketball team returned to work Friday night against Allen and the outcome wasn't what they expected. The Lady Canaries, led by Dashanae Hardy's 14 points came away with a 50-42 win over Emmaus, which falls to 1-2 on the season and 1-1 in the Lehigh Valley Conference.

The loss can be traced back to another slow offensive start. Allen came out shooting, while Emmaus struggled to hit a basket in the early going. The result was that the Hornets fell behind early, trailing by as many as 10 points in the second quarter. Emmaus was down 8-4 with three minutes left in the first when Tanisha Jones hit a three-pointer to put the Canaries up by seven. Beth Wiseley, who scored a game-high 16 points then hit back-to-back three-pointers and got the Hornets to within one at 11-10.

A turning point in the game came a little more than half-way through the second quarter when Jones and Abby Maressa hit back-to-back threes for Allen to take a 26-16 lead. This time, Emmaus wasn't able to immediately answer back and went into the break down 28-21.

The two teams battled back-and-forth in the second-half, but Emmaus could never get closer than three points the rest of the way. It looked like the Lady Hornets might have caught a break when Hardy fouled out with 1:43 left in the game and Emmaus trailing by six. Less than a minute later, Liz Waring hit a jumper to make the score 44-41.

Emmaus was hurt by confusion over the amount of timeouts they had remaining late in the fourth quarter. Coach Billy Dunn was told by the referee that he had two timeouts remaining and Dunn immediately used one after Waring hit her shot. At that point, the official scorer corrected herself and Dunn was informed that he was out of timeouts.

While Dunn doesn't believe the timeout issue would have necessarily changed the outcome of the game, it did affect his strategy late in a close game.

"I asked the ref and he said I had two timeouts left. Then, he told me I was out of timeouts and he wasn't willing to step up and make that correction," said Dunn.

The Hornets immediately fouled Janelle Miller, who hit both free throws to give Allen a 46-41 lead, which would be the closest that Emmaus would get for the rest of the game.

Emmaus was without Drea Watkins, who has averaged 12.5 points per game, because of an injury she suffered in gym class. Dunn is hopeful that Watkins will return for Friday night's game against Central Catholic.

"Not having her was a big loss," said Dunn.

Throughout the game, Emmaus had opportunities, but couldn't get shots to fall. Allen also did a nice job blocking inside shots to keep Emmaus from pulling closer. Another key issue for Emmaus has been turnovers, which were a problem early in the game for the Hornets.

"I wish I had the answers to it. We had good looks, but just couldn't hit enough of them," said Dunn.

Emmaus will face a test Friday night when it travels to Rockne Hall in Allentown to play division leader Central Catholic. The Vikettes are off to a 3-0 start on the season and are 2-0 in the LVC.