The 17th straight win for the Northwestern Lehigh boys basketball team puts the Tigers into the District 11 Class 4A finals and clinches their spot in the PIAA tournament, which gets underway next weekend. Northwestern faced Lehighton in the semifinal matchup at Catasauqua High School on Tuesday night and worked their way to a 52-36 win.

With the win, Northwestern advances to Friday night’s finals at Easton Middle School to face Allentown Central Catholic, which defeated Saucon Valley in the other semifinal game to reach the finals.

Northwestern’s defense and transition game set the Tigers up early as Gavin Nelson got a steal and raced down the court for an easy layup for the first points of the game. Down 6-2, Eli Zimmerman grabbed an offensive rebound and put it right back up to make it 6-4, but the Indians weren’t done and opened a 9-4 advantage.

With 2:42 left in the opening quarter, the Tigers started an impressive 20-0 run that lasted into the second quarter. It started with a three-pointer from Shane Marth before Zimmerman added a steal and drove the court to tie the game at nine. Josh Wambold pulled down a rebound and promptly deposited it in the basket to give the Tigers a lead for the first time since the opening basket. After opening a 16-9 lead, the defense went into highlight reel mode and scored six points off three steals in the span of :19. Zimmerman stole another and raced down the court for the layup and when Lehighton inbounded the ball, he stole it right back and went up for another bucket to make it 20-9. Nelson added his second steal and made it 22-9 with :02 left in the first quarter.

“We had a really good night defensively and forced a lot of turnovers and did a good job on the boards,” said Nelson. “When we play like we did tonight, we’re hard to beat.”

The damage could have been much worse if not for junior Blake Roberts, who scored seven points in the first quarter to keep his team as close as possible.

“We knew that Roberts historically plays well against us, and they have three all-league players on that team (Joe Roth, Cole Dietz, and Roberts) and they’re a good team,” said Northwestern head coach Patrick Wanamaker. “We came back and held Roberts to two in the second half and I had challenged Mason Bollinger at the half the stats show that he did a pretty good job.”

Zimmerman ended the first quarter with eight points and Nelson had six for Northwestern. In all, the Tigers scored 10 points off Lehighton turnovers in the opening quarter and put back two offensive rebounds for baskets.

“We are just always aggressive on defense and when you’re as aggressive as we are you can get some steals and make things happen at the other end,” said Zimmerman, who recently committed to Bloomsburg University to play football next fall. “We started a little slow, but we just sort of pulled ourselves together and went on a run with both our offense and defense. Our transition game is always good and we use that pretty well.”

The second quarter was also led by Zimmerman, who scored six points as Northwestern went into halftime with a 32-19 lead, matching their largest lead of the game to that point.

Lehighton’s Joe Roth was a one-man wrecking crew in the third quarter as he looked to pull his team back into the game.

The senior scored eight points in a 10-3 run by Lehighton as they moved to within six points at 37-31 with 2:02 left in the third quarter. Marth hit a pair of free throws in the final minute to make it 39-31 going into the final quarter.

As if to flex their muscles, the Tigers scored the first six points of the fourth quarter, including a long three-pointer by Zimmerman, and put Lehighton down 45-31 with 6:16 left in regulation.

Just to cap the night, Marth pulled down an offensive rebound and deposited it for a basket and Zimmerman got another steal with 1:17 left to play as the Tigers wrapped up the win.

“Northwestern is used to these postseason accolades as a school but for the basketball program, if I’m not mistaken, it’s been since 1998 when we last played in a district final game, so to take this group there with all of the community support and school support is great,” said Wanamaker. “This is just a really good group of dudes and they deserve it.”