The Northampton and Whitehall boys basketball teams renewed their Cement Belt Challenge rivalry at Pete Schneider Gymnasium on Tuesday night. The K-Kids came away with a 55-38 win in the first EPC game of the season for both schools.

Both teams struggled offensively in the first quarter, Northampton with turnovers and the Zephyrs with getting the ball through the hoop. After a back-and-forth 8 minutes, Whitehall led 11-9.

The Kids started to find their range in the second period, as Zac Gula scored 8 of his game-high 19 points in the quarter. Northampton erased its deficit and took a five-point lead before Joe Lisicky put back a rebound just before the buzzer to make the score 25-22 at the break.

Whitehall scored the first two points of the second half to trim the margin to one. In the most crucial stretch of the game, the Kids ran off the next 15 points to blow the game open. The Zephyrs scored the final four points of the third quarter to cut the lead to 40-28, but the damage had already been done.

Northampton pushed the lead to 15, before icing the game by scoring its final 10 points from the line.

As so often happens, 3-point shooting told a major part of the story. The Kids were a solid 6-of-14 from beyond the arc, while the Zephyrs were 2-of-14, including 0-for-8 in the second half.

Tyler Holubowski led Whitehall with 13 points. Lisicky scored 8 and Tom Buskirk chipped in 7.

Donte Rodriguez scored 17 for Northampton, including 6 in the final period. Isaac Harris had 7 and Spencer Cole hit a pair of threes for his 6 points.

Zephyrs head coach Jeff Jones summed up his team’s performance. “There are segments where we struggle putting the ball in the basket. We have to weather those storms,” he said. “We didn’t make enough plays around the basket and we didn’t make open shots when we had them. The effort’s good. A lot of the mistakes we made are correctable.”

Northampton’s Coy Stampone was pleased to come away with the win. “They (Whitehall) played hard,” he said. “In the first half they doubled us up on offensive rebounds. In the second half we did a better job of limiting them to one shot. It was a good win for us.”

The next four games for both teams will be their other Skyline Division foes. Whitehall hosts Nazareth Thursday night, and travels to Central on Saturday and Emmaus on Tuesday.

Northampton goes to Emmaus on Thursday and to Parkland on Saturday before their next home game versus Central Tuesday night.