Many times, teams echo the personality of their coach. Even though Northwestern Lehigh was far from playing its best basketball of the season in the first half of the Colonial League championship game, the Tigers were still just down by seven at the half.

Rather than deliver some fiery speech to his players about what they did wrong, head coach Chris Deutsch spoke in a very deliberately calm mode.

His players came out with that same calm mode and put together an impressive second half that led them to a 49-35 win over Palmerton and a Colonial League championship. It also gave Deutsch win number 300 of his coaching career.

Northwestern Lehigh opened the game playing well and Ali Lister and Sydney Nyce hit quick back-to-back three-pointers, opening a 12-2 lead. From there though, the tide shifted, and Palmerton took control on both offense and defense.

The result was a 10-0 run for the Lady Bombers that had the score tied 12-12 after the first quarter and the Bombers stretched that out to a 28-19 lead with just over two-minutes left in the first half.

“It was actually a very calm halftime for us,” said Deutsch. “I didn’t feel that yelling and screaming at them was going to work, so it was just a matter of talking about what we needed to do differently and sending them back out.”

The approach worked. Northwestern came out looking as confident as ever and went about chipping into the seven-point deficit. The Tiger defense bit down on the Bomber offense and went on a 14-0 run, holding Palmerton to just two points in the third quarter.

Northwestern showed that it was no fluke and again held the Lady Bombers to just two points in the final quarter and scored the final 11 points of the game to finish things off. All four of Palmerton’s second half points were scored by junior Brianna Moore.

“We knew we had to play better defense in the second half,” said Paige Sevrain, who finished the game with 11 points. “We gave up 31 in the first half and we don’t like to give up that many in the entire game, so we really worked harder to close the holes that we had earlier. She [Moore] is a really good player and it’s not easy to shut her down.”

While Palmerton tried to focus on Sevrain and Lister, they forgot about senior Sydney Nyce, who scored a team-high 13 points for Northwestern, well over her 4.7 points per game.

“I had some open looks and was able to take advantage of them,” said Nyce. “They weren’t focusing on me as much as they were a couple of other players and the other girls were able to get the ball to me.”

Meanwhile, Lister, who suffered a cut lip early in the game but was able to return, finished with 11 points.

The senior explained that one of the team’s goals was a Colonial League championship, but the goals don’t stop there.

“I think winning this game and getting these gold medals gives us even more of an incentive and confidence going into districts,” said Lister. “It feels good to have these medals and we’ve said that we wanted to win districts, too. We feel like we’ve got a good chance but we know it’s not going to be easy. We can savor this win tonight, but we’ll probably be right back at practice tomorrow and be ready for districts.”

When you compare the two teams, there are a lot of differences. Northwestern Lehigh will lose four of their starters to graduation after the season, while the entire starting lineup for the Lady Bombers will be back next season. The Lady Tigers will also lose three players who impact the team coming off the bench.