ALLENTOWN The showing the Northwestern girls' basketball team put forth in the SportsFest "American Arch" Tournament at Cedar Beach was day and night compared to their run during Stellar last week.

A week after going two-and-out in Stellar, the Lady Tigers won three games at SportsFest, and were one of four teams standing on Sunday before falling to Nazareth in the semifinals of the loser's bracket."I thought our defense was much better this weekend," head coach Chris Deutsch said. "Even when our shots weren't going in, our defense kept us in games because we were playing really good."One of the biggest differences from a week ago was forward Sarah Segan.Segan, who was absent from last week's tournament, played a big role in the Lady Tigers' 3-2 weekend. Her rebounding and ball-handling combination played crucial roles in Northwestern's run into late Sunday afternoon."She is one of our bigger girls, so she can get us some rebounds," Deutsch said. "Rebounding was a critical issue last week, and we were getting killed rebounding. We're not very big."She also gets a lot of steals for us. She can handle the ball for us so Sabrina Mertz doesn't have to do all of the ball handling. I just thought it was a better team effort this weekend."The Lady Tigers downed Allen (43-35) and Penn Crest (29-15) on Saturday before losing to last year's champion, Dunmore (39-16), early on Sunday, sending them into the loser's bracket.A win over Parkland on Sunday, 37-25, advanced the Lady Tigers to a semifinals matchup against Nazareth in the loser's bracket. A 26-14 defeat ended their run in SportsFest, but not without a few positives in the team's first run together as a whole."I definitely think it was a much better weekend," Deutsch said. "I think having Sarah Segan here makes a big difference. We beat a good Allen team, we beat a Penn Crest team, and we beat a good Parkland team. We played very well. I thought we took a lot of positives out of it."This weekend, our defense was really good. We lost this last game [against Nazareth] and only gave up 26 points. I thought our defense was good all weekend. We just couldn't score that last game. Shots just weren't going, and that's a part of the game sometimes."In the eyes of Deutsch, Sunday's 12-point victory over the Lady Trojans was their best effort as a team this summer.Following a six-point lead at halftime, the Lady Tigers' offense exploded in the second half to lead by as many as 16 points."That was as well as we played all summer, against Parkland," Deutsch said. "Both teams, Nazareth and us, had to play 40 minutes prior to that, so it comes down to conditioning and endurance. I thought our conditioning and endurance was fine. The shots just didn't go."We played five games together as a group. The more we play together, the better we have become. I can't wait to get them for the season to get them in the gym and work together as a group."The Northern Lehigh girls defeated Upper Perkiomen (34-31) in the first round of the loser's bracket following their 38-19 loss to East Stroudsburg North on Thursday.Palmerton and Lehighton went two-and-out in the tournament to round out the TIMES NEWS teams in the girls' bracket.On the boys' side, Northern Lehigh and Lehighton lost all three games in their respective pools. Northern Lehigh fell to Hempfield (48-22), Del Val Charter (57-20) and Liberty (47-16), while Lehighton came up short against Marple Newtown (38-36), Whitehall (46-36) and Manheim (40-29).The Nazareth girls downed Dunmore in the championship game, 31-27, while Allen took down last week's Stellar champ, Parkland (70-53), to earn the championship.