The boys' basketball game at Northwestern Lehigh High School last Friday night pitted two fairly similar Colonial League teams against one another.

The young and rebuilding Palmerton Blue Bombers visited the young, up and coming Tigers team on the final day of January.

Northwestern was able to come out on to for the second time this season against their North Division rival as the Tigers defeated Palmerton, 51-46.

The win for the Tigers (5-15 overall, 2-12 CL) snapped a six-game losing streak.

"It is great to get back on track," said Northwestern junior Logan Schwartz. "It was great to get it as a team and to get it at home was even better."

The rivalry battle started off shaky for both squads as neither cracked a point until a basket by Tiger junior Taylor Breininger (four points, five rebounds) with 6:09 left in the first quarter put the Tigers in the lead, 2-0, and they maintained a two-point lead for the rest of the period as they led 12-10 after one.

Northwestern extended its lead by halftime as Palmerton (1-17, 0-14) turned the ball over eight times in the second quarter. Couple that with a 7-0 scoring run by the Tigers over the last 90 seconds of the first half put Northwestern in the lead 29-21.

Tiger head coach Dan Eddinger noticed something different about his squad in Friday night's contest.

"It is amazing when they feel they can win, how much more energy the play with," he said. "I said that to them 'I wish we would believe every game.' Every one of those guys went on to that floor and played with heart tonight and that is a big difference."

That energy seemed to transfer over to the Blue Bombers in the third as the Tigers were the ones committing errors, they had six turnovers, and Palmerton ended the quarter with a momentum-swinging 10-0 scoring run that included six points from Bomber freshman Mike Stasko, who paced all Bombers with 15 points.

That typical dry spell by Northwestern allowed Palmerton to tie it up at 39 with eight minutes left to play.

Eddinger had a stern directive for his troops between the quarters.

"I said 'here we go guys. We had our little run where we went down and you guys have to steal the momentum right at the beginning,'" Eddinger said.

The Tigers responded by doing just that and forced three Bomber turnovers in their first three possessions while Northwestern capitalized by tacking on three points during that stretch to take a 42-39 lead with 6:22 remaining.

A put-back lay-up by senior Kevin Markovitch, who finished with a career high 15 points and seven rebounds and led all Tigers, pushed the lead to five, 46-41, with 4:50 left.

"I think Kevin had a really nice night," Eddinger commented. "All of his points were on put backs where he had to put on low post moves. That is what I liked."

Eddinger also liked the ending of the game as the Bombers only got within four as his Tigers finished strong and hung on to earn their fifth win of the season.

Sophomore Brady Mengel contributed nine points while Josh Williamson and Cam Richardson both chipped in six for Northwestern.

Eddinger has seen his players perform like the team they need to be, but not for the duration of a game.

"That has been our problem all year," he said. "They haven't been able to do it for 32 minutes. I think we have played a lot of 20-, 25-minute games. Unfortunately, those four-, five- or seven-minute stretches lead to 10-0 runs. We haven't been able to stop the bleeding most of the time."

The Tigers close out their 2013-14 campaign Friday as they host the Catasauqua Rough Riders. Seniors Collin Breidinger and Kevin Markovitch will be honored.