HELLERTOWN - As the regular season winded down, Northern Lehigh and Saucon Valley found themselves on common grounds, putting together similar seasons as they both fought for a Colonial League playoff berth.

Both the Bulldogs (10-6 in Colonial League) and Panthers (11-5 in Colonial League) were left just on the outskirts of the league tournament and finished with identical 13-9 records.In the team's only meeting of the season back in early January, the Bulldogs defeated the Panthers by a 57-55 margin.But during Tuesday night's first round game in the District 11 AAA tournament, the two squads looked anything but evenly matched. No. 8 Saucon Valley (14-9) outscored No. 9 Northern Lehigh (13-10) 23-9 in the third quarter to ultimately take control, and the Panthers earned a trip to the quarterfinals against Central Catholic with their 72-39 victory at Saucon Valley High School."It's hard to put teams away," Saucon Valley head coach Matt Brown said. "We don't have any 6-8 guys to dominate. We have to play really well as a team, and we did. In the third quarter, the energy was unbelievable."Trailing by 10 at halftime, Northern Lehigh head coach Jeff Miller looked for his team to come out of the locker room and cut into Saucon Valley's lead.Instead, the Panthers stepped on the gas pedal even harder.The Panthers scored the first six points of the third, including a driving layup by Keith Mosher that made it 40-24 with 6:28 remaining in the quarter. Mosher had a game-high 26 points and hit 12 of his 18 field goals."We talked about it at halftime that we played poorly, but we were down 10," Miller said. "We thought if we come out and get a bucket and get a stop, we would be right back in the game. Instead, we don't get a bucket, they get a three, and the snowball just rolled downhill from that point.The barrage would continue to build as the quarter continued to tick away. After the Bulldogs scored five of the next seven points to make it 42-29, the Panthers ended the quarter on a 15-4 run.To go along with Mosher, who scored six in that third quarter run, Connor Simpson (17 points) and Mike Kane (16 points and seven rebounds) had key roles in that spark. Simpson had 11 in the quarter including back-to-back three-pointers to end the third and Kane tallied six."They kept battling, and they're great kids who work hard," Miller said. "Unfortunately, we picked the wrong time to play the worst game of the year."The Bulldogs' offense continued to struggle in the fourth quarter, as they mustered just six points in the final eight minutes. In Miller's eyes, the offense didn't play up to the level it was during their regular season meeting.Josh Landsberger led the Bulldogs with 12 points and seven rebounds, Matt Egan tallied nine and seven boards and Tyler Dibilio notched eight."Offensively, we were pretty bad tonight," Miller said. "They were very good offensively. That was the biggest difference. We just couldn't get stops. It seems like they made every shot, and we were very tentative offensively."NORTHERN LEHIGHM. Egan 3-3-3-9, Dibilio 1-5-7-8, Taylor 2-0-0-4, Shupp 0-0-0-0, Smith 0-1-2-1, J. Egan 1-0-0-3, Hofman 1-0-0-2, Landsberger 5-2-6-12, Hamm 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 13-11-18-39.SAUCON VALLEYHeadley 0-0-0-0, Weeks 0-0-0-0, Josh Snead 0-0-0-0, Smith 3-0-0-6, Magan 0-0-2-0, Callahan 1-0-0-2, Simpson 6-0-0-17, Kane 7-2-3-16, Jake Snead 0-0-0-0, Toyan 0-0-2-0, Mosher 12-0-0-26, Pazzaglia 2-0-0-4, Carvis 0-1-2-1, Kuba 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 31-3-9-72.No. Lehigh 11 13 9 6 - 39Saucon Vy. 18 16 23 15 - 72Three-pointers: NL - Dibilio 1, J. Egan 1; SV - Simpson 5, Mosher 2.