There was no mad celebration for the Jim Thorpe girls' basketball team after Wednesday's 56-35 win over Northern Lehigh.

Despite advancing to the championship game of the Lady Indian Classic, the team knows there is still much to improve on."It's obviously a win and a chance to play in the finals, which is something we should be happy about," said Lady Olympians' head coach Rob Kovac, "but if anybody's pleased with how we just played basketball, they weren't paying attention."Give credit to Northern Lehigh, to come out and play as hard as they did. Give credit to their kids and their coaching staff, they played hard."A back-and-forth first half ended with a 12-3 run by the Lady Bulldogs (0-8) that cut Jim Thorpe's lead to 25-24 and erased a once 10-point deficit with 4:19 remaining in the second quarter.But Jim Thorpe (5-2) answered with a 13-1 run to open the third quarter to go up 38-25 and take control of the game."At halftime, I think we kinda got back to some values of what we do, and in the third quarter, we were fortunate where we started to just do stuff that Jim Thorpe is about," said Kovac.The Lady Olympians outscored Northern Lehigh 21-4 in the third quarter and 31-11 in the second half.Junior Kayley Kovac scored nine of her game-high 30 points in the third period."We started to get Kayley isolated a little bit more in the third," said Rob Kovac. "And when we started to see more help come to Kayley … we went screen-and-roll, and the roll became open all night because the help was coming over to stop Kayley's double and it really opened up the roll. We got that screen-and-roll four or five times and we started to get some easy looks."While Kayley Kovac scored 17 of her 30 points in the first half, Kaitlyn Ohl and Devon Lignore found their stride in the final two quarters. Ohl scored all eight of her points in the second half, while Lignore recorded six of her eight points after halftime."In the second half, some kids other than Kayley started to put the ball in the basket," said Rob Kovac. "Fortunately for us, in the first half … Kayley kind of kept us in the game. But in the second half, Devon, Kaitlyn and Payton (Kovac) had a couple of buckets and they were able to open up the game."As the Lady Olympians' offense started to heat up, the defense clamped down.After scoring 10 points in the first half, Northern Lehigh's Jada Saeger tallied just five points in the second half. Jill Olewine (nine points) scored six of the Lady Bulldogs' final eight points in the second quarter, but was held scoreless in the second half."We got off to a flat start, and that's not really how we want to play basketball," said Kayley Kovac. "At halftime, we talked about how we need to step it up, play better, and we got the job done."UP NEXT… Jim Thorpe will play Lehighton in Thursday's Lady Indian Classic championship game, while Northern Lehigh will take on Palmerton in the consolation game.WAIT FOR IT… The Lady Bulldogs first field goal of the second half came at the 1:11 mark of the third quarter on a basket by Kate Ziegler that cut Jim Thorpe's lead to 38-27. Ziegler finished with six points.FIRST... Northern Lehigh won the JV game, 49-23.JIM THORPERichards 1-0-0-2, P. Kovac 2-0-2-4, Condly 0-0-0-0, Ohl 4-0-0-8, Naranjo 0-4-4-4, K. Kovac 9 12-17-30, Skrimcovsky 0-0-0-0, Lignore 4-0-0-8, Gabel 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 20-16-23-56.NORTHERN LEHIGHGuelchner 1-0-0-3, L. Hoffman 0-1-2-1, Saeger 5-4-8-15, Kemery 0-1-2-1, D. Hoffman 0-0-1-0, Ziegler 2-2-3-6, A. Wilk 0-0-0-0, Mills 0-0-0-0, Olewine 4-0-0-9. TOTALS: 14-8-16-35.Jim Thorpe 12 13 21 10 - 56Northern Lehigh 10 14 4 7 - 35Three pointers: Jim Thorpe - None; Northern Lehigh - Guelchner 1, L. Hoffman 1, Olewine 1.