Two weeks after a number of area basketball teams competed in the first major tournament of the summer, the Cedar Beach Bash at the Beach, they hit the outdoor courts for the second tournament, the Allentown Throwdown at Cedar Beach Park in Allentown. It was played outdoors primarily, while the first tournament was all indoors.

The A-town Throwdown ran from Thursday to Sunday with teams playing in pool games to qualify for a postseason type tournament.

Games on Thursday and Saturday were able to be played at Cedar Beach, but Friday and Sunday were moved indoors to Executive Education Charter’s gymnasium due to rain.

Both the Emmaus High School boys and girls teams had successful weekends.

In his first season at the helm, boys varsity head coach Eric Luckenbill has hit the ground running as his team went unbeaten in pool play at the Cedar Beach Showcase to advance to the playoff format.

The Hornets followed that by going 2-1 in pool play last weekend and checked off the yearly goal of qualifying for Sunday’s playoffs.

“It’s been awesome so far this summer,” said Luckenbill. “We kind of had to start over with a new coaching staff, but we’ve been building from the ground up with a lot of newer guys that didn’t play varsity basketball last year. The wins weren’t really coming early in the summer, but the last few weeks we’ve really been coming together and our relationships have really started to grow. I’m looking forward to the future.”

On the first night of the tournament last Thursday, Emmaus lost to East Stroudsburg North. After a day off to regroup, the Hornets were back out on the courts for two games, needing to win both. They did just that by first taking down Hempfield 36-21 Saturday afternoon and then downing Samuel Fels 51-42 later that evening.

On Sunday morning in the quarterfinal round, Emmaus lost 42-38 to eventual runner-up, Pocono Mountain West. Lucas Stephan had an all-around productive weekend, according to Luckenbill.

“It was great getting to play against teams we don’t always see, but also to compete with some from our conference too, to gauge where we’re at,” Luckenbill said. “We had a lot of guys step up and play well and we will have a lot of depth this season.”

The Emmaus junior varsity team also had a successful weekend, winning its second straight tournament, beating rival Parkland Sunday evening behind tournament MVP Ben Grochowski. The Hornets also came in first place at the Bash at the Beach JV tournament.

The Emmaus girls advanced to the final four last weekend before falling to Dieruff, 43-24, in the semifinal round Sunday.

Earlier that day the Hornets defeated Reading 44-33 in the quarterfinals.

They won both of their pool play games, downing Pocono Mountain East 42-10 on Friday afternoon and then beat Dunmore Saturday evening to qualify for Sunday.