The Northampton girls basketball team might have turned their season around on Saturday by knocking off previously undefeated Nazareth, 53-41 in Pete Schneider Gymnasium. The win evened the K-Kids’ record on the season at 4-4.

Head coach Jeff Jacksits exclaimed, “We finally put four (quarters) together. We’ve been saying all year that we play three good quarters and one quarter we’re really bad. At Freedom the other night in the second quarter, we had 10 or 11 turnovers and let them take over the game. We talked about it at halftime today and came out and had no turnovers in the third.”

Northampton outscored the defending District XI 6A champions in every quarter. The only time the K-Kids trailed was when the score was 2-0. They used an 8-point run near the end of the first quarter to lead 15-8 at the buzzer. The Blue Eagles never had the margin below 7 the rest of the game.

The score at the half was 26-17. Through 3 quarters it was 39-28.

For the game the team shot 13 of 24 from 2, 4 of 8 from 3, and 13 of 15 from the stripe. Grace Lesko led all scorers with 16 points. Morgan Sterner added 14, Taylor Kranzley 13, Devyn Demchak 8, and Kylie Gilliard 2.

Defensively, they held reigning EPC MVP Talya Brugler to 2 field goals and 11 points.

“When they play together like that, we look like we could win districts,” Jacksits said. “We need to get rolling into the playoffs. It doesn’t matter how many losses we have now, because we’re automatically in. Hopefully, we take it to Beca and go in on a roll.”

Senior captain Sterner explained what the win meant.

“Nazareth has always been one of our toughest opponents,” she said. “To come out on our home court and knock them off their streak is awesome. We’d had a couple of rough games and it was nice to get back on track.”

Sterner’s quest to enter the career 1000-point club stands at 933 points. With four more regular season games on the schedule, plus at least one district game, she would need to average a little over 13 points a game to make it.

The team will complete their Northampton Division slate with games against Bethlehem Catholic on Friday and Monday. The team added games versus Parkland and Emmaus to fill the time before districts start on March 2.

The boys team has been out of action since February 10 due to COVID concerns. They are next scheduled to play on February 24 when they host Becahi. The team’s record is 6-1, good for first place in the division and second in the District XI 6A power ranking.