For the first time this season, Emmaus girls put together back-to-back wins, both against Eastern Pennsylvania Conference teams. Last week, Emmaus picked up a come-from-behind, 61-50 win over Allen and then put together an impressive 60-55 win over Liberty. The wins brought Emmaus' record to 5-7 on the season, but they were unable to stretch the streak to three games when they dropped a 38-33 nonconference game to Pennsbury.

Against Liberty, sophomore Kiyae White scored a career-high 29 points, while Jenna Lessel chipped in with 14. The two combined for 36 points in the win over Allen. On the season, White is averaging 15 points per game, while Lessel averages eight points. Beyond the scoring, the two have created problems for teams that simply can't match up with two strong, tall players.

"Kiyae has had five straight double-doubles and now, Jenna has two straight," said coach Jeff Williams. "When those two girls play well together, we're pretty unstoppable; there aren't many teams who can match up with our two post players. I told Jenna that she's the X-factor. When she comes to play and Kiyae comes to play, we're in good shape. They killed it on the boards and both had excellent efforts."

White had eight points at halftime against Liberty before exploding for 21 in the second half. Williams told White at halftime to not leave the paint and to just take over the post for the Hornets. White did just that.

"I know what I can do and sometimes, I don't play to my full potential," said White. "Today, I just decided that since I had 20 against Allen, I was going to go out there and get a career-high and that's exactly what I did."

The fact that White and Lessel click together so well on the court isn't coincidence. As it turns out, the two simply got together and decided that they could make the team much tougher if they learned how to complement each other's game. From there, the two basically became students of each other and found ways to play to each other's strengths.

"We always know where each other's shots are going and we feed off of each other really well," said Lessel, a junior. "We know exactly where we want the ball and if I miss a shot, she's always there and if she misses a shot, I'm there. Having both of us play together like that really helps the team."

"We even decided to sit together," said White. "We crash the boards to get each other's shots when we miss. Against Allen, we combined for something like 32 rebounds and a bunch of points and tonight [against Liberty], we just decided we were going to take over the game and that's what we did."

Against Liberty, the team showed great poise late in the game as the Hurricanes rallied to take a late lead, only to have the Hornets twin stingers step up and shut down the rally. White had dominated inside all game, but pulled up to hit a jump shot that put Emmaus ahead to stay with under two minutes to play.

"When she hit that jump shot, I knew that we had the game wrapped up," said Lessel. "We just had to keep rebounding and hit foul shots down the stretch and we did that."

White and Lessel have combined to score 56 percent of Emmaus' points this season and have been dominant rebounders on both the offensive and defensive sides of the court. Teams now have two players that they have to try to contain, leaving other players with the opportunity to chip in along the way. While the team is young, Williams has been impressed with how its maintained composure in key spots.

"We have young players that we can put out there and they don't panic," said Williams. "We saw that tonight [against Liberty] when we had Cayley Grabowski on the court late in the game and she helped us defensively."