Northwestern was fired up prior to its Colonial League senior night contest with Northern Lehigh on Friday.

The energy during the pre-game activities to honor the Tigers' seven seniors immediately carried over to the hardwood.

Appropriately enough, a pair of seniors were lights-out on their big night in front of family and friends. Brady Mengel and Parker Jones were terrific for the home team, en route to a 61-47 league victory over the Bulldogs.

"We like to run," said Northwestern head coach Billy Hallman. "Coming into tonight, Northern Lehigh wasn't really a transition team, so we knew we had to push the pace. We got out to that lead and that was key for us."

The Tigers immediately ran up and down the court to a 12-2 advantage in the first period and never trailed. Jones sank a pair of triples during the fast first frame. Not only did Jones score a dozen points throughout the contest, the 5-9 senior also corralled 13 rebounds.

Hallman said, "Parker is our best rebounder, Hallman said. "He's real athletic and able to attack the rim from the wings. It's hard to box him out because he's so fast and he can jump off the floor. We move him all around the floor. When he plays that way and rebounds well, we can get out in transition and get some easy baskets which works well for us."

Jones didn't have to put on his usual offensive clinic tonight because Mengel was on fire. The senior clearly got better as the game went on nailed five three-pointers during the win. He tallied a team-high 20 points.

"He's been working hard," Hallman said. "He does a lot of stuff for us, but he's our best defender. He works hard on defense, and then his confidence transitions to offense. Once he sees that first one go in, look out."

Northern Lehigh's Joe Egan scored all four of his team's points in the first quarter. He continued to cruise to a game-high 25-point performance.

"He's our leading scorer and we ask him to do a lot," explained Northern Lehigh head coach Jeff Miller. "Our point guard is a freshman, so we ask him to handle the ball a lot. Unfortunately, we didn't' give him much help tonight. A lot goes back to their early lead, and not getting back defensively."

The Tigers led by as much as 21 in the second quarter, but Miller's squad chipped away to cut the deficit to under a dozen at an instance in the second half.

"We wanted them to score in their set offense, which we thought would at least keep us in the game," explained the Northern Lehigh coach. "They gave us an opportunity to get back into the game, I thought. A few missed opportunities when we didn't get a rebound or a loose ball, we cut it to 11 ‑ but we just couldn't take advantage of it."

After the late Bulldogs'' spurt, the Tigers answered with an abrupt 9-0 run to take back complete control of the game.

"We have three games left, we're not giving up," said Hallman. "Our goal coming into the year was to get 11 wins and we can still achieve that. We have three days of practice and we can fine-tune some things. We'll take it one game at a time, we'll go play Pen Argyl and see what happens."

PLEASE COACH, PLEASE?... In the second half, Northwestern senior Connor Hess confidently stepped into and drained his first-career three-point basket.

Hallman said, "He's been bugging me all year to shoot a three and I keep telling him no. Everyone else keeps shooting them, so we went into halftime and drew it up for him. He's bummed because he took another one, and now he's not shooting 100% for his career."

A GAME OF RUNS… Aside from the big Northwestern 12-2 run to kick off the game, the Tigers ripped off another 12-0 run between the first two quarters to help keep momentum on their side.

"It was fun tonight," said Hallman. "The seniors looked forward to tonight. It's tough that it's their last game. Usually, the big crowd gets them amped up and they had a ton of fun, which is great."

NORTHERN LEHIGH

Meixsell 0-0-0-0, Egan 8-7-8-25, Kemery 1-0-0-3, Shupp 2-0-0-4, Seiler 0-0-0-0, Hess 1-0-0-3, P.Kemery 0-0-0-0, Colon 2-0-1-4, Mujovic 4-0-0-8, Sullivan 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 18-7-9-47.

NORTHWESTERN

Hippensteel 0-0-0-0, Mengel 7-1-2-20, Jones 3-3-6-12, Snyder 4-0-0-8, Fatzinger 0-0-0-0 Wiik 1-0-0-2, McCann 1-4-6-6, Seyfried 3-5-7-11 Lobach 0-0-0-0, Hess 4-0-0-9. TOTALS: 23-15-21-68.

No. Lehigh 4 11 14 18 - 47

N'western 19 17 10 22 - 68

Three-pointers: No. Lehigh - Egan 2, G. Kemery 1, Hess 1; N'western - Mengel 5, Jones 1, Hess 1.