LUMBERTON — For the first 19 minutes of Tuesday’s United-8 Conference Tournament match against South View, the Lumberton boys soccer team had a plethora of scoring chances, but couldn’t crack the code to find the back of the net.

But once one goal was scored, the floodgates opened for the Pirates in a 5-0 victory.

“We challenged them a little bit to come out and play to their full potential, and I thought we were good in the first half, we were dominant,” Lumberton coach Kenny Simmons said. “We dominated the possession, had some really good looks in front of goal. Maybe a combination of us not finishing well and their goalkeeper, he’s a quality keeper, he’s one of the better keepers in the league. He came up big on a number of plays. It was nice to get the goals we got in the first half, and ended up sailing on in pretty comfortably.”

“I feel like the way Kenny told us to play today, I feel like we had the strong plays,” senior midfielder Alexis Lopez said. “We played great as a team together. We could’ve done better at finishing attacks, scoring chances, but we scored when we could.”

Lumberton (22-2), the top seed in the league tournament, got on the scoreboard on a 15-yard shot from Hoslerson Joseph, assisted by Alexis Lopez, with 20:39 left in the first half. Just over a minute later, Korbyn Walton scored off the deflection of an Angel Robles shot to make the Pirates’ lead 2-0 over the fourth-seeded Tigers (9-6-2).

“Angel took it down the line and the keeper pushed it out, and I just hit it,” said Walton, a sophomore forward.

Lopez scored the Pirates’ third goal on a penalty kick with 8:30 left in the half.

“Luis passed me the ball and two people came, studs up and took me down,” Lopez said. “I got the P.K. and took it, didn’t think about, just shot and scored.”

Luis Izeta nailed a 20-yard shot, off Walton’s assist, to compete the first-half scoring with 5:45 remaining until intermission.

“We score them in bunches,” Simmons said. “We have had that knack for scoring a lot of goals early in games and putting people in a bad way. That’s kind of been our way this year, too. Goals change games and if you can get the first one, and a couple more come in after that, it does make things easier.”

Joseph scored his second goal, off a deflection, with 35:11 left in the game to make Lumberton’s lead 5-0.

Lumberton advanced to the tournament final, where the Pirates will meet Cape Fear Wednesday at 6 p.m. The second-seeded Colts defeated third-seeded Jack Britt 3-2 in Tuesday’s other semifinal match.

“Cape Fear and us are the two best teams in the league, and we’re probably the only two teams who are going to make the playoffs,” Simmons said. “They’ve had a good season, they’ve run through the conference pretty good. They’re a quality side. … They’re probably playing their best soccer right now. I expect a tough game tomorrow.”

Lumberton won the United-8 regular season championship for the second-straight season, but Wednesday will have a chance to do something they didn’t do last season; the Pirates didn’t win a tournament title in 2021 as the championship match was canceled due to inclement weather.

“Since we couldn’t do it last year, we’re going all out this year,” Lopez said. “Hopefully we’ll win that tournament.”