The term quicksand in sports isn't all that different from the scientific definition.

The harder you fight and the harder you claw to get out the deeper you sink, till eventually you're buried in the sand.That's exactly how the second half went Monday night for the Tamaqua girls basketball team. Tamaqua took a seven-point lead into the half, but North Schuylkill out-scored the Lady Raiders 25-11 in the third quarter to take home a 61-49 Schuylkill League Division I victory."We started out well in the second half actually extending our lead from seven to ten points," said Tamaqua coach Joe Berezwick. "The bottom fell out on us though after that. We had some break-downs in transition where they had girls open and we just couldn't get our shots to go down."North Schuylkill's defense in the second half was part of the reason why Tamaqua couldn't get its offense going.The Lady Spartans man-to-man forced the Tamaqua guards beyond the perimeter and shots that were open for the Lady Raiders in the first half became contested shots in the second."We had a pretty intense half-time speech and the girls got the message," said North Schuylkill coach John Rizzo. "We needed to do a better job of playing defense on the ball and our weak-side help defense needed to get better as well. We did the little things right in the end to get the win and the girls finished strong."Another big reason for the Lady Spartans success in the later quarters was Cait Deeter. Deeter was a "jack of all trades" all night long scoring big buckets at key moments and also creating offense for North Schuylkill."As far as athletic ability goes you won't find many girls like Cait in the Schuylkill League," said Rizzo. "She's a very good player who answered to the challenge of coming into Tamaqua and helping us get the win."For Tamaqua, Coach Berezwick and his club know they have some work to do if they want to stay in the hunt for the Schuylkill League Playoffs."North Schuylkill has sent us searching," added Berezwick. "We know we're not very big and we're not very deep so we have to make sure we get teams to play our type of basketball."North Schuylkill's Cait Deeter led all scorers with 21 points and Justine Paul and Nina Marone added 10 a piece.Kayla Hope got to the foul line 13 times during the ball game and scored a team-high 15 points for Tamaqua.NORTH SCHUYLKILLDeeter 9-2-2-21, Paul 5-0-1-10, Reinoehl 1-4-6-6, Spotts 2-4-4-8, Marone 3-2-3-10, Semanchick 2-0-2-4, L. Damiter 0-0-0-0, Warcola 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 22-12-18-6.TAMAQUAHope 4-7-13-15, Trainer 0-2-2-2, Kabilko 1-0-0-3, M. Streisel 4-2-4-10, C. Streisel 2-2-3-7, Valasek 1-0-0-2, Solt 1-6-7-8. TOTALS: 13-19-29-49.North Schuylkill 7 13 25 16 - 61Tamaqua 13 14 11 11 - 49Three-pointers: NS- Deeter 1. T- C. Streisel 1, Kabilko 1.