{"id":83219,"date":"2026-01-10T11:55:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/83219\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T11:55:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:55:04","slug":"easton-girls-basketball-pulls-away-from-bethlehem-catholic-for-7th-consecutive-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/83219\/","title":{"rendered":"Easton girls basketball pulls away from Bethlehem Catholic for 7th consecutive victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Easton Area High School girls basketball team<\/a> is in a tough stretch of its schedule with games against Nazareth, Emmaus, Bethlehem Catholic and Parkland over the last couple of weeks. <\/p>\n

The Red Rovers continued passing tough tests by fighting off and then pulling away from Bethlehem Catholic<\/a> for a 49-34 road win on Friday night. <\/p>\n

It marked the seventh consecutive victory for Easton, which improved to 11-2 overall and 9-0 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference. The Red Rovers will look to continue their winning ways with another tough road test against Parkland on Tuesday night. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely prepares us a lot. These are really talented teams. We just got to focus on Parkland after this,\u201d Easton junior guard Gabby Wismer<\/a> said. <\/p>\n

Bethlehem Catholic scored the first seven points of the second half to take a 24-20 lead when senior guard Leah Ault hit a 3-pointer with 5:49 left in the third quarter. <\/p>\n

Easton answered with a 9-0 run to regain the advantage. Senior Lianna Cole<\/a> scored with 5:03 left in the third quarter off an inbounds pass from younger sister sophomore Melina Cole to cut the Golden Hawks\u2019 lead to 24-23. A pair of free throws by Wismer gave the Red Rovers a 25-24 lead with 4:22 left in the third quarter. <\/p>\n

Senior guard Ava Muhammad<\/a> pushed the Easton advantage to 27-24 when she scored with 3:51 remaining in the third quarter. Melina Cole then split a pair of trips to the free throw line to make it a five-point Red Rovers lead with 3:16 left in the third. <\/p>\n

Following a basket by Bethlehem Catholic junior Kyah Fagan with 2:05 remaining in the third quarter to cut Easton\u2019s lead to 29-26, the Red Rovers ran off the next six points to increase their advantage to nine points. Junior Elena Brunetti made one of two free throws and Melina Cole followed the missed foul shot with a putback to make it 32-26 with 1:47 left in the third. A pair of free throws by Lianna Cole with two seconds left in the third quarter increased the Easton lead to nine points. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe always love playing Beca. It\u2019s always a great matchup. It\u2019s always down to the wire,\u201d Lianna Cole said. \u201cThis game, luckily we pulled away, we made more shots. We played amazing defense. I think that\u2019s what won us the game, our defense.\u201d <\/p>\n

After a 3-pointer by Golden Hawks senior guard Kendall Nickischer trimmed their deficit to 39-30 with 5:28 left in the fourth quarter, the Red Rovers took complete control with six unanswered points, including an impressive reverse layup by Muhammad with 4:24 remaining. <\/p>\n

A drive down the baseline by Ault tied the game 14-14 with 4:31 left in the second quarter. Melina Cole responded with a 3-pointer with 2:44 remaining in the first half to give Easton a 17-14 edge. <\/p>\n

Wismer went 8-for-10 from the free throw line on the night and finished with a game-high 14 points. The junior scored 10 of her 14 points in the second half. <\/p>\n

Melina Cole went 6-for-8 from the foul line and had 11 points in the game for the Red Rovers. <\/p>\n

Muhammad scored in each quarter for Easton and tallied nine points in the game. <\/p>\n

Lianna Cole connected on 5 of 6 free throws and finished with seven points. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have good shooters, but haven\u2019t been good from the free throw line,\u201d Easton coach Dave Lutz said. \u201cTonight, you can see how important it is and I thought we finished a little bit better in the second half.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Red Rovers coach was happy with the team\u2019s balanced scoring, which has been a common theme this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a key. I think we have one person in double figures for the year, but then three or four at 9 point whatever. So, that\u2019s a big positive for us,\u201d Lutz said. <\/p>\n

Bethlehem Catholic was led by Ault, who tallied 12 points on the night. <\/p>\n

Freshman forward Ayva Radande scored seven points and Nickischer had six points for the Golden Hawks, who will have another tough challenge on Monday night when they travel to Emmaus. <\/p>\n

The Golden Hawks, who were in foul trouble all night, were without injured players Aliyah Brame and Kamryn Gallis. <\/p>\n

For the Red Rovers, they answered another challenge and continued their winning streak. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was a great team win,\u201d Muhammad said. \u201cWe just tried to have good defense on them. Keep playing up and play as hard as we can. Just hustle, I tried to dive on the floor a lot, try to get the ball and just try my best. This was a great team win.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Easton Area High School girls basketball team is in a tough stretch of its schedule with games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-83219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}