On Saturday, the Northampton girls basketball team captured that most elusive of prey, a win in a game in which they shot poorly.

The K-Kids used a combination defense, rebounding, and timely free throws to take down Freedom 42-38 and improve their record on the season to a perfect 5-0.

Despite shooting 1-11 from 3-point range in the first half, Northampton built a 20-13 lead at the intermission. Junior Nicole Yellen demonstrated the hustle that characterized the Kids’ effort as she racked up 5 rebounds and 4 steals before the break.

An evenly played third quarter left the K-Kids holding a seemingly comfortable 6-point lead, 31-25, going into the final stanza.

The Patriots, led by Kailey Turpening’s 24 points, clawed back into game by hitting a trio of shots from long distance and adding a free throw to draw within 37-35 with 1:46 left in the contest.

Kylie Gilliard went 4-for-4 from the charity stripe in the last minute to put the game on ice.

The senior spoke about the focus required to execute under pressure.

“I try to block everyone else out,” she said. “I’m pretty good at ignoring the fans during the game, so when it comes to foul shots I was struggling a little bit in the beginning of the season, so we focused on foul shots during practice and I think it’s paying off.”

Grace Lesko played through an illness to lead the K-Kids with 21 points and also collected 8 rebounds. Devyn Demchak collected a dozen rebounds and chipped in with 8 points. Taylor Kranzley scored 7 points and added 3 steals to her stat sheet. Julia Mertz scored 2 points.

Head coach Jeff Jacksits described the message to the team to offset the lack of outside shooting.

“We have an inside advantage, so let’s work it in,” he said. “Then they (Freedom) started collapsing the whole defense around everybody. We’re just missing things. It’s early and we haven’t run some of those offenses that we were trying and we didn’t see some of the open shots.”

Jacksits wants the team to play more aggressively going forward.

“We play down to teams sometimes instead of making teams rise up to play at our level,” he said. “It’s something we have to work on. It was 19-16 at halftime against Liberty (on Friday) and then we came out and beat them in the third quarter 20-11. We picked up the pace. When we play like that we’re going to be one of the top 2 or 3 teams in the league.”