After opening the season with 9 games in 20 days, the Northampton boys basketball had a 12 day stretch over the holidays without facing an opposing jersey before their tilt with Nazareth last Friday. In a game that was within 3 points until late in the third period, the Blue Eagles prevailed 56-40.

A visibly frustrated Matt Scholl described the performance, “We had horrible practices over break. We’ve got young guys, and I’ve tried to be cognizant of that all year, but we’re halfway through. It’s time to grow up. We went over so many zone drills over break because we knew what they were going to do. Just simple things like catching and facing the basket – we didn’t do them.”

The K-Kids and Blue Eagles were even at 14 after the first quarter and after Noah Walakovits drained the second of his back-to-back threes in the second period, the teams were knotted at 21 with 2:46 left in the opening half.

Nazareth went up 26-23 at the half and maintained that three-point margin until they scored the last 7 points of the third quarter including a backbreaking, buzz-beating trey to extend the lead to 40-30.

The K-Kids only made one shot from the floor in the final period and never trimmed the Blue Eagles’ advantage to single digits.

Walakovits led Northampton with 16 points. Brady Simock scored a dozen. Korbin Sollars chipped in 5. Ethan Rephun had 3. Leo Regec and Ronnie Jones both scored two.

“We’re a mediocre team right now. That’s what we told them in the locker room. If you’re OK with mediocrity, you keep doing the same things you’re doing. We have talent, but basketball’s hard. You gotta do the right thing. You gotta make the extra pass. We played soft tonight. We’re probably going to get into the postseason, but I don’t want to settle for mediocrity,” concluded Scholl.

The post-holiday hangover continued the next day as the K-Kids lost a nonleague game to Blue Mountain 65-56. They dropped a 49-41 game to Bethlehem Catholic on Tuesday to fall to 7-5 overall and 5-3 in the EPC.