LUMBERTON — When Jadarion Chatman stepped to the free-throw line with 9.8 seconds left in Lumberton’s game against New Hanover Tuesday, he had missed his four attempts for the game from the stripe and the Pirates team as a whole had been woeful from the free-throw line.
But Chatman made free throws when it mattered, hitting both to ultimately give Lumberton a 53-51 win over the Wildcats in its last game before the start of conference play Friday.
“I’ll say this over and over — an ugly win is better than a pretty loss, any day,” Lumberton coach Bryant Edwards said. “It was fitting for Jadarion to make the free throws. We struggled from the free-throw line — it was bad — but we grabbed out a win. And I’m glad we had a game like that going into conference.”
Lumberton (4-0) was 13-for-28 for the game from the foul line.
“It felt good to help my team get another big win,” Chatman said. “We’ve just got to come out and be ready for Friday now.”
Lumberton held New Hanover (2-1) scoreless over the last 3:05 and without a field goal over the last 3:43, with a Khalil Genwright 3-pointer to give the Wildcats a 50-49 lead turning out to be their last basket. The Pirates held New Hanover to eight points in the fourth quarter.
“That’s one thing that we made sure we did, is I told them to be solid; keep the ball in front and they’re going to take tough shots, and they’re not going to make the tough shots,” Edwards said.
Jordan McNeill tied the score at 51 with a 12-foot jumper with 1:22 remaining. Lumberton’s Dwayne Davis stole a New Hanover inbounds pass with 43 seconds left, and Chatman was fouled when he drove to the basket in the closing seconds. After Chatman’s free throws, Scotty Deffinbaugh missed a long last-second shot for the Wildcats.
“We just wanted it more; we had to go get it,” Chatman said. “They were playing hard, we were playing hard, and we just had to go get it.”
McNeill scored 19 points for the Pirates to lead all scorers and had seven rebounds. Charlie Miller had nine points, Angel Bowie had eight and Dwayne Davis had seven points, with a team-high eight rebounds. Chatman scored six, and was scoreless in the last 18-plus minutes before his go-ahead free throws.
Demirion Barnett led New Hanover with 13 points, Deffinbaugh scored 12 and Abrahm Driver had 11. Genwright scored seven with 16 rebounds.
New Hanover led 17-16 after a first quarter with six lead changes. A 9-0 Lumberton run midway through the second quarter gave the Pirates a 28-20 lead, and they eventually led 34-26 at halftime.
The Wildcats closed to 37-34 with 2:56 left in the third before a quick 7-0 Pirates run stretched the lead to 44-34; New Hanover responded with an equally quick 9-1 run to close to a 45-43 margin at the end of the third.
Lumberton led 49-45 with 6:40 to go before the Wildcats scored six straight points, culminating in Genwright’s go-ahead triple.
The Pirates open conference play Friday at home against Hoke County.
“I feel pretty confident,” Edwards said. “Four wins going into league play is what we wanted to happen, and we’ve got some stuff on film that we’re going to fix. We do need two days of practice, going into Hoke. Hoke is an athletic team so we’re definitely not going to take them lightly.”
New Hanover hosts Riverside-Durham on Friday.
Defense leads Pirate girls past Wildcats
LUMBERTON — A strong third quarter by the Lumberton girls team’s defense led the Pirates to a 51-34 win over New Hanover Tuesday.
Lumberton (4-0) held New Hanover (2-2) to one field goal in the third quarter, one which came with just 5 seconds left in the period, extending a 23-20 halftime lead into a 34-23 advantage at the end of the third.
“When we went in the locker room at halftime, we told them that right now our offense isn’t running well, we’re not making shots, we’re not boxing out on rebounds like we should, and we told them we’re going to have to win this game on defense, until we can get back in practice and working on stuff we need to work on,” Lumberton coach Sam Davis said.
After that third-quarter run, the Wildcats were never closer than 11 points again.
Zye’ahna Cade led Lumberton with 16 points and Katelyn Culbreth and Jauslen Hunt each scored 10. Culbreth’s bigger contribution was on the boards, however, with 18 rebounds.
“The 18 rebounds that she got, we can take that every night,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, our other big girl got in so much foul trouble and we couldn’t play her much, but Katelyn did a great job on the boards and I hope she can continue to do that for us. The way she crashed them boards, I hope she continues to do that every night.”
Andrehya Shuford scored 11 points to lead the Wildcats and Tamia Marshall scored seven. Destiny Newkirk had 13 rebounds.
Lumberton never trailed after the first 90 seconds of the game, and built a 11-7 lead at the end of the first quarter and a 14-7 lead early in the second. New Hanover used an 8-1 run, including three Shuford baskets, to tie the game at 15, but Lumberton answered with a 6-0 run to take a 21-15 lead before their 23-20 halftime advantage.
In the third, as they held the Wildcats offense in check, Culbreth scored seven points in the quarter for the Pirates.
Three Hunt baskets and two August Smith 3-pointers in the fourth quarter helped Lumberton maintain a double-digit lead.
Davis sees a lot of things to work on as the Pirates prepare for their conference opener Friday against Hoke County, but is pleased with his team’s 4-0 start to the season.
“There’s a lot of things out there tonight that I saw we need to get better on. One of them is rebounding, one is executing our offense; we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “But I’m proud of the effort they gave.”
New Hanover has a week off before facing Lumberton again Dec. 10 in Wilmington.
Lumberton’s Akwarius Stubbs, 10, puts up a shot over New Hanover’s Destiny Newkirk, 22, during Tuesday’s game.
