Teams that miss their league playoffs can always sit down, look back at the season and find a game or two that they let slip away. The Northwestern Tigers aren’t doing that. They are looking at the fact that they qualified for play in the District 11 playoffs and could still have a lot of basketball left to play.

“The regular season ended Wednesday night and we brought them in Thursday to talk to them,” said Tiger head coach Billy Hallman. “They were disappointed, but we made districts and that was one of their goals. So we have to focus on that and what we can still do as a team.”

Hallman decided to give the team the weekend off and when it reported for practice on Monday, the players were ready to go.

“We had a really good practice,” he said. “They worked hard. They were talkative, so it felt good.”

The Tigers won four of their last five games in a furious fight to qualify for both the Colonial League playoffs and the District 11 Class 4A tournament. They fell short in the league, but finishing 12-10 overall got them into districts.

Northern Lehigh and Wilson, the two teams that Northwestern was battling with for the final two playoff spots in the Colonial League, were both eliminated in the first round.

With the Tigers playing solid basketball down the stretch, it would have been nice to keep playing and be in the hunt for a Colonial League championship, but the added time off between the end of the regular season and the start of districts could be a bit of a blessing for Northwestern Lehigh.

The team had a number of spots during the season where games backed up and when it finally had a few days to take a deep breath, the team responded by playing some of its better basketball of the season.

The Tigers were scheduled to return to practice on Wednesday before scrimmaging against Minersville and then go back to practice to prepare for the opening of districts next Friday night.

“Even professional athletes wear down playing a lot of games in a row, so for 16-, 17-year old kids, it’s going to get tough sometimes, especially with homework and getting ready for tests,” said Hallman. “We’re a team that practices very well and the kids take what we go over and put it into the game, so when we get a chance to work on things along the way, it just goes to make us a better team.”

Looking at the district rankings and how things are playing out in league playoffs, Hallman predicts that their opening game will be against Tamaqua (15-7), but where the game will be played isn’t yet known.

The layoff will also allow Northwestern to recover from some bumps and bruises, but they Tigers will be without junior Luke Hallman, who underwent surgery for a torn ACL recently. The injury was to the same knee that he tore the ACL on last season.

He’ll now look to return to the Tigers lineup for his senior season of basketball.