Parkland (15-8) and Northampton (20-4) split their two regular season meetings with each team winning on the other’s home court. Their third meeting of the year came on a neutral court in Allentown’s PPL Center with a trip to the league finals on the line.

Parkland rallied from being down double digits in the third quarter to draw close, but in the end, Northampton clung to the lead it held from beginning to end to take down the Lady Trojans 52-42.

Northampton finished with four players – Grace Lesko (15 points), Taylor Kranzley (12), Kylie Gilliard (10) and Devyn Demchak (10) – finishing in double digit scoring in the game. Lesko, a junior, has been a thorn in the side of Parkland all season, averaging 16 points in each of the three games that the teams played this season. Of her 48 points against Parkland in the three games, 29 of them have come in the second half of those games.

“She’s a really good player and really good players figure things out,” said Parkland head coach Ed Ohlson. “We didn’t change anything we were doing, but she demanded the ball a little more in this game and she was successful.”

Lesko hit a pair of foul shots in the final minute of the first half to put the Konkrete Kids up 22-14 at halftime. With 3:22 left in the third quarter, she drained a three-pointer to give Northampton its widest margin of the night at 30-18.

Parkland freshman Delaney Chilcote hit two foul shots while Northampton coach Jeff Jacksits continued to argue the foul call at the other end of the court, resulting in a technical. Talia Zurinskas hit the technical and then converted two more shots from the free-throw line to cut the lead to seven and would narrow it slightly to six by the end of the third quarter.

Parkland opened the final quarter with a 10-3 run and made it interesting, trailing just 40-37 with 3:36 left in the game.

“We never give up and we just piggyback off each other,” said senior Zoe Wilkinson of the team’s fight to cut the Northampton lead. “If one of us hits a shot, we all feed off that or if someone fouls, we pick them up. It’s not just the person who scores doing the work to bring us back, it’s really all of us and we work as a team.”

Down the stretch it was a matter of hitting foul shots for Northampton as the Kids converted 11 of 13 trips to the line to expand their lead to 48-40. Parkland looked to mount a final rally when Talia Zurinskas hit on a dribble drive with :32.8 left to play, but the Konkrete Ladies closed out the game by hitting four foul shots.

Ohlson noted that in double-teaming Lesko, they sometimes struggled to pick up coverage on Demchak, leaving her open to hit her shots. He also noted that Northampton took a different approach on the defensive end than it had in the two previous games by looking to stop Zurinskas from driving to the basket.

“We didn’t rotate behind Zoe and Madie (Siggins) as effectively as we should have,” said Ohlson. “That hurt us because [Demchak] didn’t score in our last game and she had 10 points tonight and they won by 10, so that says a lot.”.

The Trojans will have nine days off until they open play in the District 11 tournament where they will enter as the number five seed, which sets up a rematch with Pocono Mountain West, who the Lady Trojans beat in the quarterfinals of the EPC playoffs to reach Tuesday night’s semifinals. In that game, Zurinskas led the Lady Trojans with 20 points and Siggins hit for 17 in a 42-39 win over the Panthers.

Parkland will look to continue its success in districts. The Trojans went to the finals last season before falling to Nazareth 39-31. The top four teams from District 11 will advance to states, which start March 8.

Northampton will meet Bethlehem Catholic in Thursday’s league title game. The Golden Hawks knocked off top seed Easton, 45-40, in Tuesday’s other semifinal game. The girls final is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at the PPL Center, followed by the boys final between Parkland and Nazareth.