NAZARETH – Easton head coach Tim Hall had seen it before – a matchup with Pleasant Valley in the Eastern Conference girls’ soccer tournament.

The Red Rovers lost their 2015 meeting – 1-0 – in a penalty kick shootout.

Hall got a different ending on Tuesday.

Easton erased an early deficit with two unanswered goals to claim a 2-1 victory and advance to the championship game.

Hall was prepared for another nail biter.

“That had been a game, knowing how well PV defends, that it would not have surprised me if it had gone to a shootout,” he said afterward.

Goals from Bethany Hall and Allie Drake made sure the Red Rovers didn’t need any extra time to move on to Thursday’s championship game against top seed Parkland.

“They had good buildup playing with their outside backs, and then playing it back to the middle,” said Bears’ head coach Derek Strohl. “We just gotta, like we talk about, clear the ball a little bit better.”

Easton put pressure on the Pleasant Valley defense early, controlling the tempo for much of the first 20 minutes of the contest.

The second-seeded Red Rovers were close to breaking through at the 25-minute mark when Lyndsay Geiger fired a shot on goal that slammed the top crossbar. But the ball went straight down before being cleared.

Geiger’s near miss seemed to get the Bears’ attention.

Pleasant Valley produced the match’s first goal when Rylee Robinson found Morgan Covart with 17:51 to play in the first half to give Pleasant Valley a 1-0 lead.

But the advantage was short-lived, as Hall tied it with 14:09 remaining in the first half.

“Their goal they scored off a corner, but they generated that corner off a fast pace-of-play,” Strohl said. “We just weren’t able to, kind of like, disrupt their rhythm, and kind of generate our own fast enough. It comes down to, we gotta clear the ball.”

Hall’s score was the spark Easton needed. The Red Rovers pushed the tempo in the second half, before Drake produced the decisive goal with 10:36 remaining in the game.

“They just kept chipping away with pace-of-play in the second half,” Strohl said. “And I think, eventually it kind of got to us.”

Easton was able to break through against No. 3 seed Pleasant Valley’s defense, getting off several shots in front of the net, something the unit has prevented in recent games.

“Typically, the last couple games we’ve done a really good job of holding teams to shoot from distance,” Strohl said. “And, occasionally, we were doing it in stretches of the game. But Easton found a way to kind of get the ball inside the box, and kind of just keep it there, deflect it, keep it in. We just have to do a slightly better job.

“Defense has been solid all year. They’ve carried us for big stretches of the season. Same thing tonight, even just giving up two to them is still a good result. We just gotta find ways to score.”

LOOKING AHEAD … The District 11 tournament is up next for the Bears. And it’s a challenge the team is more than ready to accept. “Well, it stinks to lose. But I know that this team, we’re not done yet. We’re not gonna give up. We’re gonna work hard next week at practice, and we’re gonna rally together, and we’re gonna pull together and play really well for districts,” said Covart a senior captain.

NOT ONE, NOT TWO … Easton will be looking for its first EPC crown. Parkland has won the previous three tournament titles. The Trojans advanced to their fourth straight championship game with a 3-2 win over Emmaus in the other semifinal on Tuesday.