The tournament organizers couldn’t have asked for a better feature for the second day of the annual event at Northern Lehigh High School.

It will be Miller Time this evening around 8 o’clock in the Slatington Rotary Invitational Basketball Tournament as Jeff Miller, the longtime coach at Northern Lehigh, and his son Trevor Miller, second-year coach at Lehighton, will match wits when their teams meet in the tournament championship game.

Jeff Miller saw his team come up on the right end of a 50-35 thrashing over Jim Thorpe Wednesday evening in the nightcap. Meanwhile, the Indians had a much closer game, a 51-50 victory over Palmerton, to create tonight’s interesting meeting.

“I beat him last year,” said Trevor’s father. “And I beat him in the summer, too. I’m 2-0 against him.”

Jeff Miller was chuckling, but he probably will be much more serious when the teams tip off tonight after his team found a way to wiggle free of Thorpe following a tight-fisted first-half affair.

In fact, the Olympians nearly put the kibosh to the father-son matchup when they took near control, springing to a 30-26 lead with 3:12 to go in the third quarter. Suddenly, there was an about-face from the home club. Two late turnovers by Jim Thorpe, and a near turnover by the Bulldogs, sent things haywire for the eventual winners.

Brandon Hess saved a sure mistake, then proceeded to drill a triple and added another gutty move with a drive for a deuce before teammate Preston Kemery sank the back end of a pair of free throw attempts.

That sequence lifted the Bulldogs to a 32-30 lead that eventually came to a 42-32 spread with 4:18 to play before the game was about to become anticlimactic for Northern Lehigh.

“Things just snowballed after that,” said Jim Thorpe head coach Jason McElmoyle. “It looked like they made the turnover, but Hess saves it and they picked up all the momentum from that point on.”

It was the turning point.

But Jeff Miller wanted to make sure his kids were going to play defense and take away the inside presence of 6-6 senior Nate Rosahac.

“We never wanted to lose sight of him,” said Miller. “It’s hard not to lose sight of him, but he got away a few times. But overall we did a great job of keeping him (in check). We ran different defenses at him.”

From man, with backside help, to a 2-1-2 zone was enough to bottle up Rosahac limiting to shots and a total of six points.

“Our defense was outstanding,” said Miller.

It showed up in the second half, where the Bulldogs excelled allowing Jim Thorpe all of 14 points in the second half and was particularly effective in the final eight minutes where the visitors managed only five points.

“We got careless with the ball, and we had a lot of issues shooting,” said McElmoyle, as his team managed just two buckets in the fourth period.

Leading 32-30 to open the fourth quarter, Northern Lehigh began to pull away when Zack Moyer (10 points) hit a fielder and added two foul shots in a 7-0 run.

Then the winners turned to their ace, Hess. The slick, quick guard, who drilled in 26 points, including three triples, teamed with fellow guard Kemery, who polished off his great night with some outstanding foul shooting (8-for-9) and added 13 points.

“Those two really came up big for us, now we got to finish things,” said Miller.

BY THE NUMBERS … Both sides had 30 rebounds. Rosahac led Thorpe with 13, including seven in a monster third quarter. Kemery collared 12 for his team. Zach Searfoss took bows in scoring for Thorpe with 11 while teammate James Adames had nine.

SHOOTING IT UP … The Bulldogs shot 17-41 (41.5 percent) from the floor, while Jim Thorpe was 14-45 (31.1 percent).

JIM THORPE

Searfoss 4-0-0-11, Adames 3-3-5-9, Rosahac 3-0-0-6, Burak 2-0-0-4, Hurley 1-0-0-3, Lauer 1-0-0-2, Santiago 0-0-0-0, Cannariato 0-0-0-0, Condly 0-0-0-0, Fikentscher 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 14 3-5-35.

NORTHERN LEHIGH

Hess 11-1-1-26, Kemery 2-8-9-13, Moyer 4-2-4-10, Seier 0-1-2-1, Keller 0-0-0-0, Richards 0-0-0-0, Berger 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 17-12-16-50.

Jim Thorpe 14 7 9 5 - 35

No. Lehigh 12 10 10 18 - 50

Three-pointers: Jim Thorpe - Searfoss 3, Hurley 1; No. Lehigh - Hess 3, Kemery 1.