POTTSVILLE — The Northwestern boys basketball team hasn’t been to the PIAA tournament since 1998, so coach Billy Hallman thought it might be a good idea to relive some of those moments by having a player from that team talk to the current team about what could lay ahead for them.

The result was a motivated group of players that came from behind to beat Tamaqua 68-55 Friday night in the District 11 Class 4A quarterfinal round to earn a spot in this year’s state playoffs.

“I know for me, it really kind of sank in,” said Sam Seyfried, who has been to states before with the soccer team. “Just thinking that this would have been our last game if we didn’t win tonight really hit home with us. This feels different than soccer, there’s more hype and it seems like there’s more talk about going to states.”

Early in the game, it looked like Tamaqua junior Luke Gregoire was going to carry the Blue Raiders to states as he cut through the lane time after time to score 11 first-quarter points for Tamaqua. During a time-out, Deven Bollinger decided he wanted a crack at guarding Gregoire and Hallman gave him the job.

While Gregoire still picked up his points – a game-high 26 to be exact – he had to work much harder for the points and seven of his final 11 points came on foul shots.

“Deven stepped up and he said he wanted to guard him, so we tried that,” said Hallman. “He made him work for every point and I think he wore down later in the game and wasn’t as effective.”

Northwestern (13-10) trailed by five after the first quarter and cut it to a 35-33 deficit by the time halftime came around.

In the third quarter, Tamaqua (15-8) got off to a good start, but the Northwestern seniors took over the game and went on a 16-0 run to go up 52-42 until Brayden Knoblauch converted all three foul shots he was awarded with one second left in the third quarter, cutting it to 52-45.

“They got much more physical in the second half and we didn’t respond to it,” said Tamaqua coach Jim Barron. “They took over the game and we weren’t rebounding like we had been and they simply wore us down.”

Northwestern senior Devin Thomas got into early foul trouble and had three fouls by halftime. With Thomas getting added time out of the game, fellow senior Sam Seyfried checked in and picked up the slack with nine points in the second half.

Meanwhile, senior Sam Yadush was the spark plug for Northwestern, staying active on both ends of the court.

“It was definitely in the back of our heads that we were in that spot where if we lost tonight, it was all over,” Thomas said. “There’s no way we were ready to let this end yet and we all just pulled together to take over this one tonight. Now we get to keep playing and go after a district title and onto states.”

Oddly enough, the high scorer for Northwestern was junior Sean McCann, who was once again dialed in from beyond the arc, nailing four three-pointers and three of his four foul shots to finish with 15 points. Thomas finished with 14, Yadush had 12 and both Seyfried and Bollinger had 10.

THE ROAD AHEAD ... Next up for Northwestern is a game against Allentown Central Catholic. The Vikings downed Jim Thorpe in their quarterfinal game. The Vikings and Tigers will play Tuesday night at a location to be announced later. The Vikings are the No. 2 seed in districts, with Northwestern being the six seed.

GOOD BOY ... While Thomas got into early foul trouble, he didn’t pick up his fourth foul until there was just 3:38 left in the fourth quarter. Ironically, it was Tamaqua’s Derian Stianche who fouled out when he collected his fifth foul with 2:09 left to play.

LONG TIME COMING ... Northwestern’s victory was the first for the boys program in the district playoffs since 2008. The Tigers defeated Blue Mountain in the quarterfinal round that season.

NORTHWESTERN

Hebelka 0-0-0-0, Seyfried 4-2-3-10, Yadush 4-2-2-12, Bollinger 4-1-2-10, McCann 4-3-4-15, Rebert 0-0-0-0, Henry 1-2-2-4, Snyder 1-0-0-3, Thomas 7-0-4-14. TOTALS: 25-10-17-68.

TAMAQUA

Bonetsky 2-0-0-5, Stianche 1-2-2-4, Knoblauch 5-2-2-16, Zehner 0-0-0-0, Agosti 2-0-0-4, N. Gregiore 0-0-0-0, L. Gregoire 9-7-9-26, Stauffenberg 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 19-11-13-55.

Northwestern 14 19 19 16 - 68

Tamaqua 19 16 10 10 - 55

Three-pointers: Northwestern - McCann 4, Yadush 2, Bollinger 1, Snyder 1; Tamaqua - Knoblauch 4, Bonetsky 1, L. Gregiore 1.