With the introduction of a new conference, there were some casualties.

One of those was the amount of games each team would play against each other.

As it turned out, Parkland and Liberty boys basketball teams did not face each other during the regular season in 2014-15, however they entered the EPC finals this past weekend as the top-two seeds.

Parkland won all 16 of its games in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference regular season, grabbed a pair of EPC tournament wins and had several 17-point leads in the first half of Friday night's EPC title game at Easton Area Middle School, winning the first EPC championship with a 68-53 victory.

The Trojans showed it's perhaps the area's best team, but also the No. 5 ranked team in Pennsylvania's Class 4A.

Of the 17 other EPC teams, the only ones that the Trojans didn't face were Pocono Mountain East and East Stroudsburg North.

"One of the keys for us was guarding the arc and we didn't do a good enough job," Liberty coach Chad Landis said. "It's hard with Parkland because they have so much height and power around the basket and you try to help out inside, but then they make you pay from the perimeter. And then we had turnovers that led to a bunch of runouts for them. We dug a big hole and it's tough to come back."

Junior guard and EPC Most Valuable Player, Devante Cross, led Parkland with a game-high 18 points while junior forward Sam Iorio added 17.

The Hurricanes (18-7) got to within 37-26 at halftime. After a fairly even third quarter, Liberty, which won LVC titles in 2009, 2011 and 2013, made one more championship charge and got within six on an Andrew Hudak inside basket. Hudak was fouled and had a chance to cut it to five, but missed the free throw.

"I thought we played well enough in spurts to beat a team like Parkland, but you gotta do it the whole 32 minutes," Landis said. "The league has a great tournament, it's a great event. The atmosphere tonight was terrific. But both of us, no matter if you win or lose, you gotta put that behind you and now focus on districts and see if you can keep extending your season."

Iorio, the MVP runner-up, had another well-rounded game with 17 points, nine rebounds and three assists.

Stout and Yeboah had 13 and 11 points and Parkland just missed having all five starters in double figures with Jones tallying nine.