The Emmaus girls basketball team is closing in on a district playoff spot. With an impressive 63-30 dismantling of a pretty good Pleasant Valley team on Friday, Emmaus moved to 7-3 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and 9-7 overall. With all conference games left on the schedule, just one more win will lock up a postseason spot for the Lady Hornets.

The win over Pleasant Valley came on the heels of a tough 37-33 loss to Parkland earlier in the week. While it was a loss, it served notice about just how tough Emmaus can be as it played one of the better teams in the EPC hard and held it to its lowest point total of the season. It showed how Emmaus has improved after Parkland pounded the Hornets 62-39 earlier in the year.

“What we talked about was that Parkland has been in those games [tight games] more than us, and that was the only difference,” said Emmaus head coach Carl Scheitrum. “We’re getting there. The more times that we play those tight games against high quality opponents, the better we’re going to be at it as well. We held Parkland to their lowest point total all year, pretty impressive.”

Pleasant Valley (5-5, 7-7) and Emmaus had comparable outcomes against common opponents with Emmaus, but the Lady Hornets got off to a great start and never looked back. Emmaus held the Lady Bears to just two first-quarter points, jumping out to a 25-2 lead after the first eight-minutes of play.

“I told the girls, ‘we have to play our game from the beginning tip-off, because we have to get them out of their game early,’ said Scheitrum. “We had a super first quarter. Every player did a fantastic job defensively and we moved the ball around so unselfishly on offense. We just looked like we had been doing this forever.”

Coming into the season, there were some question marks about the team and how well it would play, particularly against the tougher teams on the schedule. Scheitrum stressed making the transition game strong and focused on defense that would help lead to transition points, and the team has bought into that approach completely.

“I feel like there was actually some doubt,” said junior Bri Hart. “We had a rough year last year, but after the first game [this season], we knew that we could beat anybody if we came together and fought as a team. We have a lot more confidence and know that it’s not going to be an easy game, but we know that if we play our game, we can challenge them.”

If there was any sort of turning point for the team, it came about a month ago after losing three straight nonconference games. At that point, Scheitrum plotted a game plan for the rest of the season, stressing defense and holding teams under 42 points as being a key to win games.

“We had a discussion after the Christmas tournament and we put the number 42 up on the board, and we held them to 30-something tonight,” said Scheitrum after the win over Pleasant Valley. “They’re truly believing that if they play well on defense, the rest will take care of itself. We played great in transition tonight, because the defense was able to get us those outlets and go.”

While Emmaus needs just one more win, its obviously looking for more. Considering the schedule that the Hornets have ahead of them, nothing is guaranteed. They have two games left against Nazareth (9-1, 14-2), one with Northampton (8-3, 11-6) and one with Easton (9-1, 13-2). Those teams are three of the top four in the district rankings. Emmaus wraps up the season against division rivals Central Catholic (4-6, 5-9) and Whitehall (3-7, 5-11). Emmaus beat Central Catholic and Whitehall earlier in the season, but lost a 66-47 game to Northampton.

Hart is enthusiastic about the team, even with the difficult schedule that remains. She believes that with the high level of confidence the team has right now, it will be tough to beat, even for the better teams in the conference,because even the tough losses have helped the team gain momentum.

“I think it helps us a lot, because we have so much chemistry together,” said Hart. “We’ve been playing together. I’ve been playing with some of these girls since first grade, so we all know each other so well and it really helped us a lot. It’s definitely a different look on things and it’s something that everyone works for and it’s definitely a turn around for the whole team.

“We kind of have that [qualifying for districts] on the side and are taking it step-by-step to do what we have to do to get there, but it’s in our heads.”