Unfortunately for the Northwestern Lehigh girls basketball team, the regular season ended they way it started, with a loss to bookend the season.

The Lady Tigers lost to Eastern Lebanon County in the season opener and then dropped the finale to Palmerton. They won all 20 games between the two losses.

The Blue Bombers came out strong and took an early lead that stretched to as high as 13 points in the third quarter thanks to a 7-0 run for Palmerton. Northwestern’s defense came up big late in the game and were down by just three in the final minute but came out on the short end of the 56-52 score.

Palmerton junior Courtney Connell had a career-high 25 points and pulled down 16 rebounds to lead the Bombers. Hailey Barry scored five early points as Palmerton opened a 9-0 lead to start the game before Northwestern settled in and pulled themselves back to trail 13-11 at the end of the first quarter.

Late in the second quarter Northwestern freshman Natalie Conner nailed one of her three three-pointers in the game to cut the Palmerton lead to just one before Connell answered with a basket at the other end to make it 24-21. That lead stretched to 26-21 at halftime.

Conner finished with a team-high 24 points in the loss and senior Cara Thomas contributed 13 points, leaving her nine points shy of becoming the all-time scoring leader in Northwestern basketball, surpassing Steve Showers, who finished his career in 2001 with 1,451 points.

Conner has put together a phenomenal year in her first varsity season scoring 358 points to date for an average of 16.3 points per game, while Thomas has averaged 19.5 points per game in her senior season with Northwestern.

The two teams met in the semifinals of last year’s Colonial League tournament with Palmerton avenging three straight seasons of losses to Northwestern in the league finals as the Bombers went on to win the league championship.

Even with the loss Monday night, Northwestern will hold onto the top seed in the league tournament with Palmerton being the three seed. The Tigers will host Bangor Friday night in the opening round and Palmerton will put its undefeated home record on the line when it hosts Catasauqua.