The goal for most teams is to make it to Sunday of the annual SportsFest A-Town Throwdown basketball tournament. More games means more of an opportunity for coaches to evaluate their team’s positive and negatives throughout the summer.

Head coach Chris Deutsch and the Northwestern girls hoops team didn’t get off on the best foot when it opened play on Thursday. However, it ended with an impressive showing from the Lady Tigers.

After defeating Liberty 32-19 on the tournament’s opening night, Northwestern picked up wins over Sankofa (48-25) and Central Dauphin East (33-25) to improve to 3-0 in pool play and advance to Sunday.

“Today [Saturday] I thought we played really well,” Deutsch said. “Our best win of the day was against Central Dauphin East; that is a state playoff team from last year, and they are very physical and aggressive. I like the way we moved the ball offensively.

“Defensively, we were really good to only allow them 25 points.”

The perfect finish in pool play awarded Northwestern one of the 16 spots available for Sunday’s single-elimination tournament. After a dominant showing against Dieruff (43-14) to open play on Sunday, the Lady Tigers’ run came to an end against Dunmore, 46-36.

But after a subpar showing on Thursday night, Northwestern couldn’t argue with winning three more games and coming up just short against a talented Dunmore team.

“I think Thursday we were just tired, and everybody was coming off different sports,” said incoming senior Abby Chisdak, who also plays soccer in the summer. “That was like our wake up-call game. And today [Saturday] we really bonded as a team, played well and shared the ball.”

Northwestern graduated just one senior in Paige Stitzel. The Tigers return all five starters from last year’s district playoff team. Chisdak, along with Leighanna Lister, Jess Williamson and Gabby Sevrain, figure to be the key senior leaders for this group that has a unique mix of senior leadership (seven upperclassmen) and young talent that expects to make an impact.

Besides a number of open gym sessions this summer, Northwestern had not played together as unit since the Patti Heffner tournament back in early June.

The Lady Tigers experienced tough competition against Parkland, Freedom and Pottsville, among other teams, before seeing more of the same in this weekend’s SportsFest tournament.

“Do you like to win? Absolutely,” Deutsch said referring to the summer tournaments. “But you learn about different rotations and who plays well with one another. You learn a lot this weekend on personnel. The other thing is it’s a great atmosphere to be outside and having people here.”

Bethlehem Catholic defeated Northampton for the girls’ championship. A total of eight EPC teams made it to Sunday, while Northwestern was one of two Colonial League representatives on the final day. The other was Notre Dame (Green Pond).