You know the old saying, ‘you can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him.’ That was never truer than in Tuesday night’s Colonial League quarterfinal matchup between rivals Northwestern Lehigh and Southern Lehigh.

The Tigers (13-4) looked to contain senior Daryl Coleman, who beat them with a late three-pointer during the regular season. Through the first half Tuesday, the Spartans (7-5) did stop Northwestern’s Dylan Witkowski, holding him scoreless but only temporarily.

Witkowski opened the scoring in the third quarter with a three-pointer and in overtime, scored all eight of Northwestern Lehigh’s eight points to advance the Tigers to the semifinals with a 52-49 win over the Spartans.

When the celebrating was done, Witkowski’s scoring line showed 17 points, with six of the biggest coming in overtime. With the score tied 46-46, Coleman hit a three-pointer with 1:42 left to play and momentum shifted to the Spartans. Rather than hang their heads, the Tigers came back down the court and got the ball to Witkowski, who again tied the game by hitting a three-pointer of his own with 1:25 left in overtime.

Both teams had some miscues after that but with just 3.9 seconds left in overtime, the Tigers ran a set that allowed them a couple different options and it turned out that Witkowski not only had the hot hand but also was in the right spot to put up a three-pointer. The shot was perfect. Southern Lehigh was suddenly down by three and immediately called a timeout to regroup for one final shot.

“Justin [Holmes] set a perfect screen for me on that play, and I had the open look, so I took it,” said Witkowski. “We saw their guy [Dominic Lisicky] was overplaying that the whole game on that play so I just decided to come off a different way and that created the opening.”

Northwestern effectively took Coleman out of that final play with a double-team and with the Spartans only option being to get the ball to Max Pristas for a long three-point attempt, all they could do was watch as the ball bounced off the rim with the buzzer sounding in the background.

Coleman scored 21 points in the game but he didn’t dominate the game the way he can.

“Coleman’s going to get his points,” said Northwestern head coach Jerry Lloyd. “But we at least made him work for as many of them as we could. I thought Nick [Henry] and Cade [Christopher] did a good job when we went to a box and one on them. You don’t stop Coleman with one guy. It takes the whole team.”

The game saw nine lead changes and the teams were tied 20-20 at halftime. The Tigers came out hot in the second half as Witkowski hit his three to start things off and spark an 11-0 run to go up 31-20 and put the Spartans on their heels. Southern Lehigh shook off the onslaught and put together their own 8-0 run that crossed over into the fourth quarter and cut the deficit to just three points.

No matter how hard Northwestern tried to pull away, the Spartans stayed right with them and moved to within one point and then tied the game when Lisicky made the second of two foul shots with 1:46 left in regulation, setting up the overtime battle between the two teams.

“We just wanted to end overtime,” said sophomore Cayden Fitch, who scored five points and played a big role for the Tigers defensively. “We just wanted to double Coleman and make sure that he couldn’t catch a ball, so they had to make someone else make a play.”

With the win, Northwestern – seeded third in the Colonial League - moves into the semifinal round against Bangor (9-3), the number-two seed in the tournament.