For a while, Northwestern Lehigh head coach Chris Deutsch thought his team played some pretty good defense in the first eight minutes to trail Southern Lehigh by just three points.

The Lady Spartans took control in the second period, however, and never looked back in beating the Tigers, 53-18 to advance to Friday night's Colonial League championship."They played really well defensively and took us out of a lot of stuff we were trying to do," Deutsch said afterward. "Credit them, they're very good. They've won 22 games in a row for a reason."I really liked the way we played defensively in the first half. I thought we really had them confused a little bit with the things we were doing. The problem was we couldn't score to set up the defense that we were trying to use."The score was actually tied at 4-4 with 2:56 still left in the first quarter. The Spartans then scored the last three points of the opening period and first six of the second stanza to open up a 13-4 lead.Five layups by Southern Lehigh off of Northwestern turnovers, plus a couple of three-pointers by Sydney Cyr and Amanda Mobley, widened the lead to 27-10 at halftime."They got on a little spurt there right before the half where we had some turnovers, couldn't score and they really took advantage of that," noted Deutsch. "You've got to give them credit. They did a lot of good stuff tonight."Southern Lehigh ran the floor well and scored 10 layups on the night off of steals."The only team that I've seen with that type of caliber is Minersville," Deutsch said. "Minersville is really good. You're going to have to play really well to beat them (Southern Lehigh). They've got a lot of fire power. You can take a couple of girls away, but they have others that can score. And they're big."The Spartans had four girls finish in double figures, led by Mobley with 17, Cyr with 13, Elizabeth Cassel with 13 (who had a double-double with 15 rebounds) and Olivia Snyder with 10.The Tigers were led by Erika Thomas, who had 13 of her team's 18 points."They blocked a lot of our shots and altered them," Deutsch said. "They're really good defensively. That really creates a lot of their offense."THOMAS HITS IT… Thomas came into the game needing 12 points to hit the 1,000-point mark and did it with a pair of free throws with 1:54 left in the game.OWNING THE BOARDS... The Spartans, led by Cassel, a freshman, pulled down 35 rebounds to just 16 by the Tigers.NO FIELD GOALS… Northwestern had trouble getting a decent shot off in the second half as Southern Lehigh held the Tigers to zero field goals. Northwestern's offense came from making 8-of-10 at the charity stripe.FINALISTS… The Spartans will face Palisades, a 42-19 winner over Bangor in the other semifinal, at 6 p.m. on Friday at Freedom.NORTHWESTERNAtitel 0-0-0-0, Lister 1-0-2-2, Chisdak 0-0-0-0, Sevrain 1-0-0-2, Koenig 0-1-2-1, Williamson 0-0-0-0, Dietrich 0-0-0-0, Thomas 3-7-8-13. TOTALS: 5-8-12-18.SO. LEHIGHBennett 0-0-2-0, Cassel 5-3-7-13, S. Cyr 5-1-2-13, Dex 0-0-0-0, Miller 0-0-0-0, A. Mobley 8-0-1-17, B. Mobley 0-0-0-0, Schaffer 0-0-0-0, Snyder 4-2-2-10, Tankred 0-0-0-0, Campbell 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 24-6-14-53.N'western 4 6 5 3 - 18So. Lehigh 7 20 10 16 - 53Three-pointers: NW - none; SL - S. Cyr 2, A. Mobley 1