It wasn’t long ago that Salisbury had Palmerton’s number. When the Falcons opened the Colonial League portion of its schedule this winter, they did so with a convincing 58-41 win over the Blue Bombers in mid January.

A little over a month later, Palmerton had payback on its mind.

The Blue Bombers used a 11-4 run to end the second meeting between the two teams, sending Salisbury home in the Colonial League tournament quarterfinals round with a 49-42 win. Palmerton went on to lose against No. 1 seed Notre Dame (Green Pond), 80-61, in the semifinals.

“We were going back and forth in the third quarter,” Salisbury head coach Jason Weaver said. “It was a one-possession game back and forth until about the three-minute mark…[Kody] Kratzer came down and we fouled him on a three-point play, and then we were down four. And then the exclamation point, we turned the ball over, and they scored again. We couldn’t get the big basket when we needed it.”

One big difference from the first meeting was Salisbury’s struggles on the offensive end of the court. Palmerton was able to play much of last week’s game in a zone defense, which forced the Falcons into numerous costly turnovers.

Salisbury had just 37 possessions in the second meeting, one of its lowest totals of the season.

“It wasn’t a defensive issue,” Weaver said. “Offensively we didn’t do a good enough job attacking them and getting good shots. We only had 37 possessions in that game. And 12 of those possessions we didn’t even get a shot off.”

Salisbury held a 12-4 lead after the first quarter, and then took a three-point lead into halftime.

But Palmerton had an answer with two game-defining runs. The first was just after halftime when the Blue Bombers rallied with a 9-0 spurt to take a 27-24 lead. Then, the Blue Bombers closed out the game by scoring 11 of the final 15 points in a fourth quarter that saw four lead changes.

“We got a lead in the first game,” Weaver said. “They were playing from behind, and we got them out of their zone. They were playing a little more man-to-man defense. And this time, since it was a little more of a tight game, they were able to play more zone. We didn’t do a good job attacking it. The first game we probably saw 80 percent man-to-man defense; this game was probably close to 80 percent zone.”

Weaver also would have liked the Falcons to attack Palmerton’s zone a bit more than they did for much of the game. Salisbury hit eight 3-pointers in the game.

“Sometimes we rely too much on three-pointers when we could attack and get some other looks,” Weaver said. “We made three-point shots, but we didn’t attack enough.”

Kyle Artis and Quinn Warmkessel each scored 11 points for the Falcons in the loss. Kratzer finished with a game-high 21 for Palmerton.

The encouraging news for Salisbury is that its season isn’t over yet. After a makeup game this past Monday against Oley Valley, the No. 4 seeded Falcons will face No. 5 Palisades in the District 11 Class 3A playoffs on Thursday. Game time is set for 7 p.m. at Salisbury High School. The winner will take on top-seeded Executive Education Charter in Saturday’s semifinals.