PEMBROKE — The big crowd and raucous environment of a Purnell Swett-Lumberton boys basketball game is something that could potentially bring added pressure and nerves, especially for the visiting team and especially in the first time being a part of it — like a lot of the key players on a young Lumberton team.

But any doubt about how the Pirates would handle the situation were quickly erased Tuesday.

Lumberton scored 14 of the game’s first 15 points, led by 20 just over eight minutes in, and kept dominating through out on their way to a 69-20 rout of their rivals in Pembroke.

“It was huge for these young guys to come in, handle their composure — it’s big time,” Lumberton coach Bryant Edwards said. “You better get them now while they’re young.”

Lumberton (8-7, 3-2 United-8 Conference) took a 14-1 lead less than four minutes into the game, with five points in the stretch from Jaiden Shephard including a triple, and an additional 3-pointer by Nick Lawson, who hit another trey moments later for a 17-3 lead.

“The guys in practice were talking about, it’s Lumberton, and I think the guys put all their eggs in one game,” Purnell Swett coach Jeremy Sampson said. “It is Lumberton, rival, but you’ve got to come play every game, and we just didn’t play the first few minutes. They came out, hit a couple 3s, got going on the break and we got down early, and just couldn’t execute offensively and didn’t play defense.

A Simmeon Lennon 3 for Purnell Swett closed the Pirates’ lead to 17-6, but Lumberton went on another run, this time 18-2, that gave them a 26-8 lead at the end of the first quarter and a 35-8 lead with 3:52 left in the first half. The stretch included two baskets from Christopher Hammonds, and a personal 6-0 run to start the second quarter by Dimetrious Jones.

“I feel like that was good, we got our energy going and helped us get the momentum to keep the big lead,” Dimetrious Jones said. “I felt like I just had something to prove (with the personal run).”

Collin Sampson and Aiden Clewis hit triples for Purnell Swett (3-10, 1-5 United-8) late in the half and the PIrates led 40-14 at intermission. Lumberton’s lead was 62-18 at the end of the third quarter.

“Coach just told us to keep our head in the game, keep our foot on their neck and just kill,” Dimetrious Jones said.

Dimetrous Jones scored 18 points and Amare Jones added 13 to lead the Pirates. Shephard scored seven points and Nick Lawson and Brady Chavis scored six apiece.

“(Dimetrious) brings a scoring aspect that we needed for these young guys, and Amare as of late has been taking care of the ball and really finding our shooters and getting everybody going,” Edwards said. “That’s big for our young guys, that’s big for their growth of the young core that we’re playing and getting plenty of big minutes right now.”

Lumberton won its 11th straight game against the Rams, and for the 26th time in the last 28 meetings. The Pirates posted their seventh consecutive alternating result after Friday’s loss to Seventy-First, while Purnell Swett lost the eighth game in its last nine.

While the game wasn’t the halfway point of conference play like it would typically be, due to each team having makeup games still to play, it still marks a turning point with each team about to begin playing United-8 foes for a second time. Lumberton does so against Cape Fear at home on Friday.

“This game right here, we wanted to use it to springboard into heavy conference play, because we’ve got a lot of games the next few weeks, back-to-back-to-back, and I think we’re playing better basketball of late,” Edwards said.

Purnell Swett hosts Pine Forest in a nonconference game on Wednesday before resuming league play Thursday at Gray’s Creek, a game that was moved up a day due to a scheduling conflict.

“We’re struggling right now; outside the win against Douglas Byrd, we’re struggling finding our identity,” Sampson said. “The guys are blaming each other at this point, blah blah. We’ve just got to shut up and play, and keep playing. … I’m trying to keep the guys together. I told them, hey, guess what, you get to play again tomorrow. You’ve got put it behind you and lace them up and play again tomorrow.”

Second-half defense leads Lady Pirates past Rams

In a game that was tied at halftime, it was the defense of the Lumberton girls basketball team over the second half that propelled the Pirates to a 47-34 win over rival Purnell Swett Tuesday in Pembroke.

Lumberton (4-9, 2-3 United-8 Conference) held Purnell Swett (4-10, 2-4 United-8) to 12 points in the second half, outscoring the Rams 25-12 over the last 16 minutes.

“That energy they came out with in the second half was something that they chose to do,” Lumberton coach Ivy Johnson said. “Our second-half defense, that was BreAndrea Glover right there. Once she saw what she could do, she got hungry and she kept going. … But it wasn’t just Bre, the whole team stepped up with the energy. We were in passing lanes a little better and played more comfortably I think, more aggressively.”

The Pirates’ second-half defensive effort showed not only in the low number of points allowed, but in several of their own baskets which were the result of defensive plays to cause Rams turnovers.

“It was definitely our defense that led to some easy buckets, and we started actually picking up the defense at the end of the first half, we just didn’t finish a few of those gimme buckets,” Johnson said.

“We turned the ball over 18 times in the second half, so that’s 18 shots we don’t get up, that’s 18 times that — and they converted on about half of those, easy baskets,” Purnell Swett coach Robert McLean said. “I think Lumberton just had more energy, they were faster to the ball, their guards made shots. They’ve got some older guards, and that showed.”

Lumberton led 27-26 with 4:16 left in the half before an 18-2 run over the next 8 1/2 minutes; this gave Lumberton a 36-28 lead by the end of the third quarter and a 45-28 lead at the run’s conclusion with 3:47 left in the game. The stretch included seven points from Gabby Locklear and three straight baskets by BreAndrea Glover, the first on a smooth reverse layup and the last two off of her own steals.

“I feel like the key defensively was, when Bre gets her defense together, she’s almost impossible to get by,” Gabby Locklear said. “I feel like we came out with more energy and more intensity and a better will to win the game than they did.”

Lumberton led 13-10 after a back-and-forth first quarter behind five points in the period from Andrea Brown and 3-pointers from Gabby Locklear and Charley Whitley. The Pirates outscored the Rams 10-4 over the last 5:05 of the quarter.

“When Gabby and Charley are hitting shots from the outside, it really allows us to opes up the middle for our bigs to be in the high post and work in the low post, and it gives us that high-low look that’s hard to guard for anybody,” Johnson said. “When Gabby and Charley are hitting shots, it does a lot for our team.”

Lumberton expanded its lead to 20-12 midway through the second quarter after Gabby Locklear and Whitley each hit another triple. Purnell Swett answered with a 10-0 run, led by four points from Niyah Locklear, to take a 22-20 lead before Lumberton’s Andrea Brown closed out the first-half scoring with a layup with 10 seconds left to tie the game at 22-22 at the break.

Gabby Locklear led Lumberton with 14 points, Whitley had 12 and Glover and Brown each netted eight.

Niyah Locklear scored 14 points and Alexis Locklear had 10 for Purnell Swett, which posted its sixth straight loss.

Lumberton snapped a nine-game head-to-head losing streak against the Rams dating back to 2019.

“That’s one thing that we stressed; rivalry week, we’ve got to bring the energy,” Johnson said. “I think we didn’t quite live up to that in the first half, but after halftime we did. That’s a big thing, it’s an in-county rival, it’s a conference rivalry, so the girls wanted it.”