In his 16 seasons as the coach of the Northwestern Lehigh Lady Tigers, Chris Deutsch has had a lot of success and some very good teams. The one thing that has eluded him has been a Colonial League championship and he’s hoping that this will be the year his team gets the honor.

Unfortunately, his team stumbled on its latest step toward attaining that goal when Notre Dame (Green Pond) came into Northwestern (13-4 overall, 10-2 Colonial League) and beat the Lady Tigers 49-39 in front of a raucous crowd.

Early in the game, the Tigers struggled with a number of unforced errors and errant passes that prevented momentum from coming to the Northwestern side of the court.

As often happens, the struggles coincided with the Crusaders seemingly not being able to do anything wrong and just over a minute into the game, Notre Dame (15-0, 12-0) opened up a six-point lead and stretched that to 10 with three minutes left in the quarter before Northwestern collected themselves and cut the lead to seven when the horn blew.

“We didn’t come out playing well,” said Deutsch. “It wasn’t the effort. It was just that we made a couple bad decisions and were maybe trying to be too perfect. Obviously, they’re a very good team and if you can’t play with them from the opening tip-off, it’s a lot tougher to catch up against a team like this.”

A key problem for Northwestern was controlling senior Cassie Murphy both on the boards and shooting. For the most part, Murphy was guarded by freshman Paige Sevrain, who did an admirable job against her but wound up with two quick fouls and added a third before halftime, limiting how aggressive she could be.

The result was Murphy pulling down 12 rebounds, eight of which were of the offensive variety. Murphy finished the night with 25 points to go with her rebounding prowess and was a constant catalyst for the Crusaders.

“I thought Paige played well against her and that’s a tough matchup,” said Deutsch. “We gave them too many opportunities and when they’re getting two or three shots, it’s just too much and it’s going to hurt you.”

Down by 11 at the half, Sevrain looked to put the team on her back in the third quarter. She worked her way down low and scored eight of her 14 points in the third quarter as Murphy started to pick up some fouls.

Sevrain also limited Murphy to just four points – two of them on foul shots – in the third quarter. Sevrain’s time on the court was limited slightly after she picked up her fourth foul and in the fourth quarter, Murphy retook command of the game to drop in eight points of her own.

The loss somewhat echoed the Lady Tigers loss’ to Bangor (13-3, 10-3) when they fell behind by 16 before rallying to tie the game only to fall to the Slaters 48-44. Bangor won the rebounding battle in that game as well and Deutsch is aware of needing to get his players to be tougher around the basket.

“We have to limit other team’s chances,” said Deutsch. “Sometimes you can get away with that against a team that isn’t that good, but against teams like Bangor and Notre Dame, you just can’t give away opportunities and that’s what it came down to tonight.”

The Lady Tigers are still in good shape and currently stand as the third seed for the Colonial League tournament, keeping their goal of a league championship intact.

Deutsch, who picked up his 200th win as Northwestern’s coach earlier this season, believes his team can play with elite teams such as Bangor, Notre Dame and Moravian Academy (11-4, 11-3).

Earlier in the year, Northwestern beat Moravian Academy by 11, so there’s no reason to doubt Northwestern’s chances.

Northwestern returned to the court Tuesday night and took any frustrations they had out on Southern Lehigh (6-10, 5-7), beating the Lady Spartans 62-24. Paige Sevrain and junior Tess Ledeboer led all scorers with 16 points each, while Sydney Sevrain added 12 and Ali Lister chipped in with 10 points on the night.