After three straight seasons of handling Palmerton in the Colonial League playoffs, the Northwestern Lehigh girls basketball team fell to the Blue Bombers 27-26 in the league semifinals this season.

Palmerton took an early 12-2 lead as Northwestern went over 10 minutes of game time without scoring a point.

Throughout the first half, the Tigers battled back, and Emma Freeman nailed a three-pointer out of a timeout to make it 17-9 before Cara Thomas cut the lead to six with a basket in the final seconds of the second half.

Palmerton reversed the comeback in the third when Sydney Frantz drove for a basket and Ella Baumgardt hit on a three-pointer to make it 22-11 in favor of Palmerton. Thomas hit a shot from beyond the arc and followed with a jumper to make it 22-16, but as was the case all night, Palmerton slowed the momentum with a basket by Frantz. Freeman again looked to spark a rally with her second three-pointer of the night and by the end of the third quarter, the lead was back to six at 27-21.

You don’t see many hook shots these days, but Palmerton’s Courtney Connell got nothing but net on a left-handed hook to make it a 29-21 game early in the final quarter.

Northwestern’s Olivia Minnich hit from just inside the foul line and on their next trip down the floor, Brook Balliet nailed a three-pointer to make it 29-23. Just as quickly as the uprising started, the Bombers put it to rest with their defense and went on to score the final eight points of the game for the 37-26 win and a ticket to the league finals.

Frantz finished with six points in the game, but her main contribution was guarding Thomas, Northwestern’s leading scorer and holding her to seven points in the game. Another key was that the Bombers got to the line 18 times and converted 10 of those trips to points, while the Tigers had only three opportunities on foul shots and missed all three.

Thomas and Balliet shared the team lead in points with seven, while Megan Matsko scored a team-high 10 points for the Bombers.

“We have to do better at that (drawing fouls) and be more aggressive and try to get some of those easy points for ourselves because they hit 10 of those shots and that was a big difference,” said Northwestern coach Chris Deutsch. “We have to go at teams harder and not be afraid to draw contact. We gave up a lot of points on fouls tonight and you can’t do that against these good teams.”

The last time the two teams met during the regular season, Palmerton won by 15 points and commanded the boards. This time, Northwestern did a better job on the boards and cut down on second chances for Palmerton, but the Bombers were still able to limit Northwestern’s second chance opportunities as well. Early in the game turnovers and weak shooting plagued Northwestern and gave up the early lead.

“I thought we played better than the last time we faced them, and we got more shots, but couldn’t get them to go. We had more opportunities, but I think we were pressing a little and never got into a rhythm,” said Deutsch.

Palmerton (23-1) went on to defeat Notre Dame - Green Pond 34-20 in the finals to take the league championship and give the Blue Bombers the top seed in the District 11 3A tournament. The Tigers (18-6) are the fourth seed in 4A and will play Tamaqua (17-8) in the opening round of districts. Tamaqua was eliminated by North Schuylkill in the semifinals of the Schuylkill league playoffs and are the fifth seed in 4A.