Liberty continued their hot streak in the new year with two wins last week, but the Hurricanes will face their toughest set of games since early this season with their second go-round of EPC Steel division opponents in a massive stretch to close out the regular season over the next two weeks.

The Hurricanes (12-4) are winners of seven straight games and have not lost in 2020 yet, following a 48-46 win over East Stroudsburg South and an 85-81 win over Pocono Mountain West last week. Both of those wins came on the road and in overtime to make things even more impressive for Chad Landis’ team.

“We are learning how to win games,” said Landis. “We have done a good job with end of the game situations. Our balance on offense gives us a lot of options at the end of the game and the kids have been willing to share the ball, which has been great.”

This week, however, will start the true test of where the Hurricanes stand in the paradigm of EPC tiers when they took on Allen (12-2) on Tuesday [past Press deadlines] and Bethlehem Catholic (9-7) on Friday.

With Easton (12-3), Freedom (12-4) and Dieruff (8-8) on the slate to close out the regular season, Liberty’s schedule won’t be easy, but that’ll be the case for every team vying for the Steel division lead heading into the EPC tournament.

“We will finally get to play some games at home,” Landis said. “We had four straight road games. I’m hoping that playing at home will help our energy early in the game. We also have not shot the ball as well as we did early in the season and hopefully the home court will help that as well. We know all the teams in our division are very good and everyone is trying to make a push to play well going into the playoffs.”

Coming into the week, Allen, Liberty, Freedom, Easton and Bethlehem Catholic were all teams in position to qualify for the EPC tournament, but everyone knows a lot can change over the next slate of divisional contests.

Freedom has split its last four games, dropping losses to Allen over a week ago and most recently a 66-60 defeat to Central Catholic last Friday.

With Becahi, Bangor and Dieruff on tap for this week, head coach Joe Stellato knows he has big week ahead for his squad before a brutal final three game stretch against Easton, Allen and Liberty.

“I think we’ve been playing great at times, but we need to be more consistent,” said Stellato. “We played unbelievably against Allen in the first half and then came out in the second half and could not hit a shot. For the Central game, we did not have Malek Mims, who is out with a sprained ankle. Not sure when we get him back, but without him, we struggled on both ends of the floor. It’s difficult to make up 20 points. But looking back at both games, I feel we beat ourselves and these things can be fixed and we can play better. I’m excited for the upcoming stretch of games and hope to get Malek back soon.”

Caleb Mims was on pace to break the 1,000 point mark in Tuesday’s contest, as he only needed 11 points to hit the century mark.

Mims’ stat line is worth monitoring moving forward, as he has a good chance to challenge becoming the school’s all-time leading scorer, which is held by Luis Ortiz with 1,225 points. Andrew Stein (1,068 points) and Nick Discolo (1,034 points) are the only other Patriot players in school history that Mims sits behind.

With six regular season games left, plus postseason play, Mims needs 237 points to set the school record.

Malek is also on pace for the record books in career steals, as he’s second on the school’s all-time list with 217. Nick Discolo holds that record with 251 steals. Needing 35 steals over the final stretch of the season might be tough to top, but the Mims brothers will certainly go down as the best sibling combo that Freedom basketball has produced.

After winning five straight games, Becahi has went 1-2 in its last three, losing to Easton 71-35, before bouncing back with a solid 51-41 win against Whitehall, only to falter back with a 44-39 upset loss to Nazareth last week.

Head coach Scott McClary hopes his team can find some consistency in a pivotal week with games against Freedom, Pleasant Valley (4-10) and Liberty.

“The past week has gone a lot like our entire season, very up and down,” said McClary. “We have to be more consistent. We have another three game week this week and we are also in the middle of exam week, so a lot on the plates for these young guys and we will need to work hard to manage it well.”