The Salisbury and Northwestern girls basketball teams had polar opposite games offensively and defensively in their game last week at Salisbury High School.

The Falcons were unable to score double digits until the third quarter, but the Tigers had 10 points in the first quarter alone and were over 30 shortly after halftime.

Northwestern used its size and defense to stifle Salisbury into their second lowest scoring effort of the season, falling 50-25 last Thursday night at Salisbury High School.

The Tigers (12-5 overall, 8-3 Colonial League) jumped out to leads of 10-2 after one quarter, and 24/7 at halftime, and never let the Falcons get closer than 19 points in the second half.

“It gets a little tougher to win when you have to dig out of a hole,” said Salisbury head coach Joe Mladosich. “We needed to dig in more on both sides of the ball, and we did not do that. When times got tougher, we decided to go one-on-one a lot of times instead of moving the ball. When you don’t do the necessary things like that you aren’t going to win. They have a good team over there and they played really well tonight.”

Two players in particular gave Salisbury fits. Leighanna Lister (16 points) and Sage Christopher (10 points) combined over half of their team’s points while grabbing nine and 12 rebounds, respectively. Lister also had three blocks, while Christopher went 4-for-5 from the free throw line.

“They did a good job inside us against us,” said Mladosich. “We couldn’t body anybody. We didn’t do a good job of getting rebounds. You can’t compete when you are out-rebounded like we were.”

Caylin Meikrantz tallied a team-high 11 points for Salisbury (10-7, 6-5). The senior also had three rebounds and three steals. Sarah McGee added six points, two rebounds and two steals for the Falcons. But as a team, the Tigers mixing of defenses caused havoc for Salisbury’s offense. They threw zone and man at them at different times, and the offense just could not find a rhythm all night.

“We need to get better and play more consistently,” Mladosich said. “If we play like this [in playoffs], it’s going to be a quick exit. We have a lot of kids hurt, and we’re young, but that’s still not excusable. We’ve got to work harder.”

The Falcons took down Northern Lehigh 61-18 Saturday to keep their hope of qualifying for the league tournament alive. Salisbury’s regular season finale was against Southern Lehigh Tuesday.