The script was flipped from last season between Palmerton and Northwestern Lehigh. That is until the Lady Tigers rewrote this year’s ending.

Last season, Northwestern Lehigh swept the two regular season games against Palmerton, came into the league playoffs as the top seed and downed third seed Northwestern to win its first title since 2014. This season, Palmerton won the two regular season meetings and was the league’s top seed while Northwestern Lehigh was the three seed. That is where the alternate ending came in as the Lady Tigers downed Palmerton 40-38 to win back-to-back league titles.

Last year’s finals were all about defense for Northwestern Lehigh as it held Palmerton to just four second-half points. In this year’s finals, Palmerton outscored the Lady Tigers over the final 16 minutes, but Northwestern was still able to repeat as champions.

After a win over Wilson in the semifinals, Palmerton (21-2) head coach Dan Beck talked about the fact that controlling junior Paige Sevrain would have to be a focus for his team if it was going to dethrone the Lady Tigers (21-4). It was a good plan, but it did not play out well as Sevrain hit for 18 points on offense and collected 12 rebounds in the game. In fact, it was Sevrain who hit what proved to be the game winner with just 18 seconds left in regulation.

Palmerton was able to contain freshman Cara Thomas, who averages 12 points per game, the second highest average on the team. Thomas chipped in with four points and was her usual bothersome self defensively for Northwestern Lehigh. It was another freshman, Brook Balliet who was second to Sevrain in the championship game. Balliet finished with 12 points, just two off her season high and pulled down the final rebound of the night for Northwestern.

“I am so proud of these girls,” said Tiger head coach Chris Deutsch, who was more animated and showed more emotion than usual following the win. “There were a lot of people who didn’t give us a chance at the beginning of the season because we were so young, and we made it this far because these girls tuned everything out and worked hard in practice and worked hard in games and they made this happen.”

Northwestern Lehigh went into the locker room at halftime with a 19-13 lead, its largest margin of the game to that point. True to form as a team known for its dominance in the second half of games, the Lady Tigers put together an early 11-3 run to stretch the lead to 14 points with 4:17 left to play in the third quarter. They needed every bit of that run because Palmerton showed it was not going away. Beck called a timeout and the Bombers quickly regrouped to cut the lead to five by the end of the quarter and came out just as hot in the fourth.

“We knew when we were up 30-16 that they were going to make another run at us,” said Deutsch. “They are not a team that quits, and they are good enough to come back from that, so we knew it was far from being over at that point.”

Bethie Morgan cut the deficit to 32-31 when she drained a three-pointer from the corner with 6:19 left to play. Palmerton took another timeout with 3:01 to play and Northwestern Lehigh still up by one.

This time, the quick breather benefited the Lady Tigers, who saw Sevrain drain a couple foul shots and Balliet, who opened the third quarter with two long three-pointers, this time decided to drive the lane and connected on a layup with 2:20 left in the game to put the Lady Tigers up 38-33.

Yet another Palmerton run led to a tie game when Morgan put the team on her back and hit two foul shots as the opening act to knocking down a shot from behind the arc to tie the game at 38-38 with just :45 left in regulation.

The teams traded turnovers before Sevrain found herself with an open look from the lane and hit a little jumper to make it 40-38. Palmerton took their final timeout to set up a final shot and fed the ball to their three-point specialist senior Raegan Nemeth.

The shot from just in front of the Palmerton bench looked to be on target but bounced off the rim to Balliet, who quickly got the ball down the court where Rachel Dorney took in the pass and ran out the final seconds of the game.

“I thought we tried to force shots,” said Beck. “We took some bad ones, and the ball wasn’t going in for us. I thought we did a good job coming back though and the girls played hard. The farther you go in the playoffs the tougher the competition gets, and we have to be ready for that.”

Northwestern Lehigh is the number two seed in the Class 4A District 11 tournament, coming in just behind top-seeded Jim Thorpe.

The Olympians (23-1) breezed through the Schuylkill League tournament to win their league title and appear to be on a collision course with the Lady Tigers in the district finals.

Between now and then though, Northwestern Lehigh faces seventh-seeded Lehighton Saturday at Whitehall High School and would then have to face the winner of the Allentown Central Catholic and Pen Argyl game in the semifinals.