After a successful holiday schedule in which the Whitehall boys basketball team feasted on some good home court cooking, they were looking to extend that good cheer into the new year when they hosted Northampton.

However, the Konkrete Kids had other ideas and put a halt to the Zephyrs five-game winning streak with a 62-50 win that raises their record to 7-5 and drops Whitehall to 8-3.

Northampton has become a bit of a nemesis lately for the Zephyrs, winning two out of three last year, including a sweep of the regular season series, but later losing in the opening round of the district playoffs as Whitehall rolled to the district finals.

Head coach Jeff Jones has preached getting off to fast starts, and when the team sputtered out of the gate they had to play catch-up the rest of the game, with the Kids finally sealing it at the foul line in the fourth quarter, converting on 11 of 12 to ice the game.

“We found ourself in a hole and we fight back, take a lead, and then we couldn’t get a stop,” said Jones. “We never could get an important stop when it was tied or we had the lead. It seemed like they’d always get back.”

The game featured eight lead changes, and when the Kids went up 44-42 with a little under five minutes to play in the game, they never looked back, hitting a three the next time down the floor to push the lead to five which ultimately forced the Zephyrs to put them at the foul line down the stretch.

The Zephs crawled to within three when they amped up their defensive pressure on the ball with a little less than three minutes left, leading to a Logan McGinley steal who fed Kayden Walschburger for a layup to cut the lead to 49-46.

But senior Mario Delker was near perfect at the line, finishing 7-of-8 at the stripe as part of his game-high 22 points.

Coming into the game, Jones felt they had the edge athletically, but it didn’t appear that way on the floor. Northampton’s Mohamed Diakite was attacking the basket with vigor, finishing with 16 points. Tanner Hahn also had a good floor game, finishing with 11.

“I thought we had some things that we could take advantage of, but we didn’t do that,” said Jones.

Part of the problem was their own inability to get to the foul line. While they shot the ball well from the perimeter in the first half, those same shots weren’t falling in the second half. That’s why Jones stressed getting to the line before the game, essentially telling them they couldn’t afford to live solely on the perimeter.

“We wanted to make sure we didn’t come in at halftime having taken two foul shots, and what did we do, we took two foul shots at halftime,” said Jones. “So we were not attacking the basket at all. If you don’t attack the basket, you don’t get to the foul line.”

In all, the Zephs attempted just five free throws with Charles Hudson accounting for each of those appearances.

This was the first game in which no one reached double figures. It was also their lowest offensive output of the season.

Four players finished with nine points, including Logan McGinley, Zach Gilbert, Jackson Buskirk and Hudson.

Jones said that a poor practice on Monday may have laid the groundwork for their poor performance of Tuesday.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, it translates,” Jones said.

Still, they cut it to three with just under three minutes to go, but Northampton answered with a bucket at the other end like they did throughout the second half.

“Give them credit, they played a way better overall game than we did,” said Jones. “We didn’t do anything very well tonight.”