Even when Northwestern trailed Emmaus by as many as 16 points in the first-half, there was a feel to the game that made you think the Tigers weren't out of it by any stretch of the imagination.

When Megan Landrigan hit a desperation three-pointer from just inside the mid-court stripe to end the first-half, it seemed like there was still plenty of fight in the team to mount a comeback.

Much of the problem early on came from the Tigers inability to stop Emmaus from getting the ball to six-foot freshman Kiyae White down low. White had a definite size advantage and was able to use that to go six-for-six from the floor early on and have 14 points at the half.

Northwestern's halftime adjustments made sure that White wouldn't be able to duplicate her performance in the second half. In fact, the adjustments worked so well that the Hornets didn't even score in the third quarter and scored just six points in the game's final eight minutes.

"We outscored them in the second half, 32-6, and we knew this was going to be a tough game, because we had to come to their place," said Tiger head coach Chris Deutsch.

"They had us a little down in the first half, but I thought we kept our composure and we were very fortunate to be down by just nine at halftime because the way we played in that first half, we were lucky to be down by single digits. We could have been down a lot more than that, to be honest with you.

"[White] was phenomenal for them. They were getting her the ball and she was making her shots. We made some changes at the half and we were able to hold them to just six points in the second half."

The comeback was especially impressive when you consider that Northwestern doesn't have much experience in playing from behind this season. Their toughest comeback was against Liberty when they trailed by nine with four minutes remaining and were able to grab a win against the Hurricanes.

"Our girls played smart, disciplined basketball and they kept their composure," said Deutsch. "It's a tough-knit group of girls who really battle and play hard and while we're not the biggest team out there, we play very hard. We also have a close-knit group that knows they have each other's backs."

Senior Trista Cunningham was a constant for the Tigers throughout the game, scoring 10 points in each half to lead all scorers with 20 points. Sabrina Mertz finished with 12 points, Landrigan had nine and Sarah Segan had eight. Mertz put in nine of her 12 points in the second half.

"We didn't get down on ourselves when we were struggling," Cunningham said. "We know that we have a good team and when we made the adjustments at halftime to get more girls on [White], we were able to keep them from scoring and work our way back."

While she was the leading scorer, Cunningham gave credit to her teammates for helping to rally the team for its second-half play.

"That shot by Megan [Landrigan] was huge and then Sabrina [Mertz] and everybody else just started to find their shots in the second half and pretty soon we had turned the game around," Cunningham said. "This was a big win because they're a good team and to come back like that was all just a matter of everybody doing what they had to do to win."