The Northwestern Lehigh girls basketball team beat Lehighton 62-33 Saturday, winning its fourth straight after dropping its first two games of the season by a total of just eight points. Since then, the Tigers’ four wins have had an average margin of victory of just under 25 points per game.

Freshman Paige Sevrain put up 23 points against the Indians, which she said was a personal high for her at any level of basketball. Sevrain has made quite a statement in her first six varsity games and in the four-game win streak she is averaging 12.5 points per game for the Lady Tigers.

“Paige Sevrain was a beast down there today and she had a heck of a game,” said Northwestern head coach Chris Deutsch. “We just kept feeding her the ball because we thought that was a good matchup and we took advantage of that. Then she started hitting some outside shots, too, and pulled up and hit a couple of jump shots. When she’s hitting like that, she’s hard to defend.”

The freshman has made a quick but difficult adjustment to playing a different style of game than she was used to and has quickly become a top scoring threat for the Lady Tigers.

“It’s been an adjustment having to change the way that I play, but the older girls have really helped me out and have made the adjustment easier for me,” said Sevrain.

Lehighton coach Joe Berezwick knew his players would have to keep their composure against the Tigers’ press and their daunting half-court defense. For the most part, his team played well, but eventually, his players were worn down and Northwestern (4-2 overall, 3-0 Colonial) was able to take a 13-point halftime lead and stretch it out over the course of the second half.

Lehighton sophomore Hailey Miller finished with 10 points, seven in the first half, including a three-pointer with 3:14 left in the second quarter that cut the Tigers lead to six.

That was as close as the Indians would get. Northwestern went on a 7-0 run to finish out the half to lead 26-13 at halftime.

Ali Lister finished the game with 10 points, six of which came in the third quarter. She also pulled in a number of early rebounds and fed the ball up-court to set up a number of scoring plays for teammates. Lister’s six third-quarter points all came within a span of under three minutes, two of them on back-to-back breakaways set up by steals, one of which was done by Lister.

The combination of Lister hitting from the floor and Sevrain nailing five of her six foul shots in the third quarter pushed the Northwestern lead to 45-24 going into the final eight-minutes of play.

The Northwestern defense stiffened in the second half and Tess Ledeboer came off the bench to score four points in the final quarter as Northwestern continued to build on their lead.

“I knew a week ago that we were getting close,” said Deutsch of his team’s turnaround. “Now the girls are getting comfortable with each other and they’re starting to fit into their roles and we’re finally seeing what we thought would come out of all of this: an offense that’s hitting shots and a defense that can shut down some pretty good scorers and can help us to win games.”

The four-game winning streak includes a 39-32 win at Southern Lehigh Friday night. The win over the three-time defending Colonial League champions was the first in “five or six years,” according to Deutsch.

Northwestern has shown a marked turnaround in its performance on the court and the Tigers are going to need all of what they’ve shown in their four-game stretch to keep their winning ways going with a tough schedule ahead of them. They play at undefeated Moravian Academy Tuesday and then go to Northern Lehigh for their rivalry with the Bulldogs (3-1, 2-1) on Thursday. They then play at Pottsville (1-1, 0-0 Schuylkill) on Saturday. Both the Northern Lehigh and Pottsville games are part of a girls-boys double-header.