ALLENTOWN - There weren't a lot of victories for Times News area basketball teams the past few days at one of the most competitive high school tournaments of the summer.

But one team that was able to pick up a win was the Panther Valley girls.Head coach Bill "Dapper" Lynn and the Panther never entered the Stellar Construction basketball tournament. When that tournament was replaced this year with the inaugural Cedar Beach Basketball Showcase, Lynn decided to enter his team.The results were certainly positive.After Panther Valley dropped its first game to Emmaus on Thursday to enter the consolation bracket, the Panthers turned the tide with a win over Stroudsburg on Saturday. Their run came to an end hours later against Salisbury via a 25-19 defeat."We never played here before - none of these seniors ever played in a summer tournament down here," Lynn said. "We have to start playing. We have some freshmen here. We just have to be competitive and win some games."For a team that will return two senior starters, but could also start three underclassmen in the winter, getting as much court time as possible in the summer is essential."They are learning and we have to keep learning," Lynn said. "We play in the Schuylkill League and that's one of the toughest leagues around."Christina Dacey (a four-year starter) and Molly Sheridan (two-year starter) will be key senior leaders in guiding that group. Both had solid tournaments for Lynn and he'll rely on them come the winter season."Coming into this tournament, I just wanted to get experience and I wanted myself and the underclassmen to be challenged for when the winter comes," Dacey said.Lynn is already seeing the improvements on the court in his second season as head coach. The Panthers, who also compete in the Tamaqua Summer League, hadn't won a game in that league in the last five years. They've already broken that streak this summer.The other area team to pick up a victory was the Lehighton boys.Newly hired Lehighton head coach Trevor Miller guided his team to a 1-2 mark.The Indians took care of business in its opening game, defeating Allen's B team on Thursday night, 48-29. Lehighton then came up short against District 3 powerhouse Trinity Catholic (44-33) on Friday and Notre Dame-Green Pond (42-31) on Saturday."I thought we competed in every game we played," Miller said. "I have extremely tough kids that battle every time they step on the floor."Trinity was unfamiliar for us and were extremely big, so we knew we couldn't match up with them man-to-man. Our 3-2 zone in the Trinity game was excellent and again we played extremely hard."The summer gives teams an opportunity to not only play teams they might not be normally familiar with, but it also provides the chance to try out new schemes and techniques.For Northern Lehigh, coach Jeff Miller was dealt the task of playing without two of his top players this summer due to injuries. He had to switch up his defensive schemes a bit and offensive system without leading scorer Gio Colon."Last night when we played Owen J. Roberts, I was happy with the way we played," Miller said. "We competed really well. We are an undersized team, especially right now because our tallest guy is out for the summer with an ankle injury. We were small to begin with and now we've become really small."We struggled at times to score. With with Gio out, I really only have one other scorer and that's Brandon Hess, who is our second leading scorer from last year."TWO-AND-DONE ... Four of the six Times News area teams competing in the double elimination tournaments went 0-2. On the boys' side, Northwestern, Northern Lehigh and Panther Valley dropped their only two games while Lehighton went 1-2. On the girls side, Lehighton went 0-2 and Panther Valley 1-2.CHAMPS CROWNED ... In a boys championship game, Berks Catholic defeated Archbishop Carroll. University City (Boyertown) defeated Freedom for the girls championship.