The Northampton boys basketball team overcame a slow start to rally past East Stroudsburg South to claim a 49-48 conference win thanks to a varsity-career high 18 points from junior guard Shakim (Sha) Dunbar on Friday night.

The win pushed the K-Kids record on the season to 10-3 overall and 6-3 in the EPC.

South scored the last 5 points of the first quarter to take a 10-5 lead after the first 8 minutes. Northampton’s defense kicked in the second period as they limited the Cavaliers to one basket, a three-pointer, and 3 free throws on their way to eking out a 17-16 advantage at the intermission thanks to a Brody Graff backdoor layup just before the buzzer.

Early in the second half South turned to junior Jaen Chatman, a 2023 first-team all-EPC performer, to carry the offensive load and they were rewarded with an 11-3 run that staked them to their largest lead of the game, 27-20.

This is where Dunbar took over. He scored 10 straight points for the K-Kids as part of a 12-4 run that gave Northampton a 32-31 lead going into the final period.

Head coach Matt Scholl praised Dunbar, “I don’t think many people expect Sha to go out there and score. Sha’s been shooting a lot better. We saw it in the summer, he worked really hard on shooting. We have the Atlas chain. Sha’s won it three times now. He’s the biggest winner of the year. He changes the speed of the game for us. He’s our energy guy.”

For his part, Dunbar showed a team-first attitude despite his career night, “I didn’t really care about the points, I just wanted to win. I’m not really looking to score. I trust all of my teammates and they trust me, so that gives me confidence.”

The Northampton lead oscillated between 1 and 3 points for the first 6 minutes of the final quarter as the teams matched scores and defensive stops. The Cavaliers were eventually forced to send the Kids to the line and they delivered by going 7 of 8 from the stripe, including 4 straight by J.J. Kolumber to close out the game. South did hit a meaningless three at the buzzer to make the game seem just a bit closer than it really was.

In addition to Dunbar’s 18 points, the rest of Northampton’s scoring was: Kolumber 9, Graff 7, Tristan Pinnock 6, Noah Walakovits 5, Brady Simock 4.

Scholl put the season so far into perspective, “We’ve had a good schedule. It’s been favorable. We took advantage of it. Even at the beginning of the year, we knew we’d be OK, better than what some other people thought. But 10-3 has exceeded what we thought we’d be.”

Last year the K-Kids were nervously watching the District XI website to see if they would win power rating tiebreaker to get the sixth and final spot into districts. Now with 10 wins on their ledger, they can assure themselves a spot in the postseason with just one win over their final 9 games.