Northern Lehigh entered the postseason a year ago on a roll, riding a four-game winning streak to cap an eight-win regular season.

The Bulldogs are on a similar run this year, closing out the season with five-straight wins to cap a nine-win campaign.

And they might be coming off their most complete game of the season, a 49-28 victory over Palmerton in Week 10.

It was a victory that came after a thrilling 40-33 victory over Notre Dame Green Pond in Week 7, and a pair of hard-fought victories over Tamaqua (21-7) and Jim Thorpe (14-13) the following two weeks.

“It’s big. You talk about momentum now for Week 11, and we wanted to get that back,” said Northern Lehigh head coach Joe Tout. “To come back last week and to do that, I think we hit on all cylinders again.”

The Bulldogs rode their late-season momentum to a District 11 Class 2A title and a spot in the state semifinals last fall.

This group has all the ingredients to make another deep run.

Northern Lehigh’s (9-1) win over Palmerton and Tri-Valley’s loss to Williams Valley in Week 10 helped the Bulldogs secure the No. 1 seed in the Class 1A bracket, where they will host fourth seed Mahanoy Area this Friday at 7 p.m.

The Golden Bears are coming off back-to-back wins over Nativity (34-0) and Shenandoah Valley (48-12) to close out the regular season.

Mahanoy ran for 360 yards and six touchdowns against the Blue Devils. Colm McGroarty carried the ball just five times, found the end zone on three of those carries, and rushed for 134 yards. Ben Manley also ran for 134 yards on eight carries with a touchdown, while completing 4-of-7 pass attempts for 31 yards and a score. McGroarty is averaging 118.8 rushing yards per game and has 21 touchdowns on the ground.

“It will be different, it will definitely be different,” Tout said of Mahanoy. “They would run what I call traditional sets. They’re going to line up in the I, and we run it too, but it’s going to be tight end, split end sets - twin sets - stuff under center that you really don’t see a whole lot of anymore. But we just have to get our kids level-headed now. The emotion that came from Friday night, all the kids get a medal for winning our division in the league, all that stuff, and sometimes there can be a bit of a lull the next week.

“But Mahanoy is a physical team. We scrimmaged them last year, so we’re a little familiar with them ... and their line was impressive. They took it to us a bit, and I know I talked to their coach afterward, and they brought all those kids back. They made a switch early in the year at quarterback, moving him to tailback and moving their fullback to quarterback. And now they’re more traditional. They used to run; I don’t know if it was truly the Navy triple-option, but it seems like they’ve gotten away from that, and now they’re doing more traditional sets. So we have to be prepared for both.”

Northern Lehigh ran the ball 61 times for 406 yards last week against Palmerton. Senior quarterback Nick Frame carried the ball 16 times for 168 yards and a score, while fellow senior AJ Jimenez ran the ball 23 times for 136 yards and four touchdowns.

The Bulldogs entered the week third in the area in both points per game (32.0) and yards per game (340.2).

Northern Lehigh’s defense held a high-powered Bombers’ offense averaging an area-best 420.9 yards and 39.7 points per game to 281 total yards and 28 points. The Bulldogs came into Week 10 leading the area with 15.2 points and 214.2 yards per game allowed.

The squad should also be at full health entering the postseason, providing yet another boost for a team that appears to be peaking at the right time.

“Coming into the playoffs, we have that same energy,” said Frame. “None of us want to go home, and that’s definitely going to motivate us even more going forward.”