The Northampton girls basketball team salvaged a split of their season series with Bethlehem Catholic with a 56-52 victory Tuesday evening.

The K-Kids had dropped the game at BC 44-40 on Saturday.

The game was tight throughout. Northampton erased an early four-point Lady Hawks’ lead with an 8-point run in the first quarter. Becahi scored the last five points of the period to go up 15-14.

In the second quarter, the Kids started to go inside to center Grace Lesko, who scored 8 of her 12 points in that period. The Northampton guards also started driving to the hoop leading to the team scoring 11 of their 17 points in the quarter from the free throw line. The K-Kids went into halftime holding 31-28 lead.

Both teams turned up the defensive intensity in the third quarter leading to a combined 13 turnovers. Morgan Sterner was able to go coast-to-coast on a couple of steals to help Northampton expand its lead to six by the end of the period, 43-37.

The Hawks hit their first three shots of the final period, including a pair of threes, to trim the margin to 46-45 with 5 minutes left in the game. The Kids responded by scoring four in a row before the teams went into a three-minute scoreless drought. The lead was 52-49 when Becahi started forcing Northampton to close out the game from the charity stripe.

Taylor Kranzley hit both ends of a 1-and-1 with 50 seconds left, but the Hawks responded with a three to cut the lead to two. Sterner hit the front end of the next 1-and-1 and Lesko corralled the rebound when the second shot missed its mark. Another Sterner free throw with 16 seconds left put the game out of reach.

Sterner led the scoring with 22 points. Lesko and Kranzley each had 12. Devyn Demchak had 6 and Kylie Gilliard had 4.

Sterner’s career point total following the Becahi game was up to 965. There will likely be a concerted effort to get her to 1,000 points during the team’s final regular season home game on Friday against Emmaus. That would allow her to celebrate on her home floor and not have the milestone hanging over her head during the district playoffs. The number of points she will need versus the Hornets will depend on her tally from Wednesday’s game against Parkland.

At 5-5 on the season, the girls are currently on the bubble to host a preliminary round district game on Tuesday. Teams 3 through 8 in the power rankings get home games and the K-Kids are currently 7th. Possible opponents are Whitehall and Emmaus.

The boys team finally broke their 2-week COVID quarantine with a game against Becahi last night. The result was too late for Press deadlines. They are in the running to secure a bye into the quarterfinal round of districts if they sweep their remaining regular season games. If not, there could be a doubleheader Tuesday night in Pete Schneider Gymnasium.