Last Thursday, the Northampton boys basketball team headed to Nazareth with a chance to sweep the season series with the Blue Eagles and all but clinch the EPC’s Northampton Division title.

Instead, perhaps inspired by their Senior Night, Nazareth handled the K-Kids 60-45.

Head coach Matt Scholl was unsparing in his postgame assessment, “They’re soft. We know that. We’ve known that all year. Nazareth took advantage of that today, so credit to them. Our guys have to decide whether they’re content being the 2024-2025 EPC champs, or do we want to fight? They chose to complain instead of being tough tonight when the refs weren’t calling fouls.”

It was the end stretches of each period that really did in the Kids.

The Blue Eagles finished the first quarter on an 8-0 run to take the lead 18-14.

Nazareth scored the last nine points of the second period to go into intermission with a 31-20 advantage.

The K-Kids got the lead down to a manageable seven points midway through the third quarter, but the Blue Eagles outscored Northampton 7-1 over the final four minutes.

That 13-point lead proved to be insurmountable.

But all is well that ends well for the K-Kids. They finished the season strong, winning three games over four days, including a 17-point win over Pocono Mountain West, the team with the best power ranking in District XI.

Nazareth, meanwhile, lost games to Easton and Liberty to allow the K-Kids to clinch the Northampton Division without going through any messy EPC tiebreakers.

The Kids’ 14-2 conference record earned them the number two seed in their quest to defend their EPC title. In the quarterfinals, they will host Whitehall in Pete Schneider Gymnasium on Friday at 7 p.m. The two rivals played a couple of weeks ago at Whitehall with the K-Kids winning 44-37.

The winner will head to the PPL Center for the EPC semifinals on Monday.

N’ampton 14 6 9 16 - 45

Nazareth 18 13 11 18 - 60

Northampton scoring: Simock 14, Raysely 11, Walakovits 9, Regec 8, Raphun 2, Ramos 1