Salisbury’s players know it had been a long time since their program won a Colonial League playoff game.

It had been nine years, almost to the day, since the Falcons’ last league tournament win. The team qualified for this year’s tournament and faced seventh seed Lehighton last Friday night.

Salisbury pulled away in the second half for a 60-45 win.

The game was close early with Lehighton looking to shut down Falcon leading scorer Steven Lozada, who scored just two points in the opening quarter as Lehighton led 14-12 after eight minutes.

The Falcons went on an 11-0 run with five different players scoring during the stretch to take the lead.

“I can put five guys out on the court, and they all can dribble,” said Salisbury head coach Jason Weaver. “They all can shoot. They all can knock down threes. If they’re going to take Steven (Lozada) away, we just have to find some open guys, and they can knock their shots down.”

Julian Makhoul capped the run by hitting his second three-pointer of the game to make it 23-14, giving him eight points in the first two quarters.

Lehighton wasn’t going away that easily. The Tribe scored the game’s next six points to cut the Salisbury advantage to 23-20.

Lozada added a three-pointer with 25 second left in the half to give the Falcons some added breathing room.

Lozada’s return to the scoring column gave Salisbury a fire that carried over into the second half. Garrett Leiner scored to open the half and Bryan Gonzalez followed with a three-pointer. Lehighton’s defense looked to stop the other scorers, and Lozada not only hit a pair of foul shots but scored five more points in the third.

“We’ve played together really well as a team even going back to the summer season,” said Leiner. “All of our guys are willing to get the ball to the open guy and let them shoot. They were playing Lozada pretty tight, so we just started moving the ball around and then he started to get open and get some shots.”

Lehighton was able to stay competitive, but the Falcons’ lead increased, and they held a 38-29 lead going into the final eight minutes of the game.

Both teams let their offenses run wild in the final quarter.

The Indians cut the margin to five points at 39-34, but that was as close as they got the rest of the way. Lehighton used fouls to try to catch up, but Gonzalez went 4-for-4 from the line in the final :49 of the game, along with dropping in another basket to stretch the lead out to 15 for the 60-45 win.

Lehighton’s Blake Roberts led all scorers with 21 points. Lozada had 13 in the second half to finish with 18 to lead Salisbury. Makhoul finished with 15, while Leiner and Gonzalez both had 11.

“This was great to come out and defend our home court and get this first playoff win,” said Gonzalez. “We’re not satisfied with just this win though, so we need to keep playing hard and put some more wins up to get a championship.”

The Falcons face Northwestern Lehigh, the three seed, in the semifinals as they look to advance to the finals and their shot at the program’s first league title since the 2011-2012 season. During the regular season, Salisbury downed Northwestern Lehigh at home 56-41 in the only meeting of the two teams.

Top seed Notre Dame – Green Pond will face Catasauqua in the other semifinal game.