Roundup: Lady Scots hold on late to sink Pirates

LAURINBURG — It was a rollercoaster of emotions for Scotland as the fourth quarter faded against the Lumberton Pirates Monday night.

Going up by 11 with 2:11 remaining on a 3-pointer by Madysan Hammonds, Scotland’s momentum shifted to Lumberton’s side when the Pirates scored six points in less than a minute to cut into the Lady Scots’ lead at 47-42.

But after four consecutive possessions of inbounding the ball and being fouled — with Lumberton at only one team foul beforehand — Scotland was able to close it out at the free-throw line and improve to 6-1 with a 50-42 nonconference win.

“I just knew we needed to hold the ball,” Scotland head coach Roshien McClain said about the last few possessions of the game. “As long as we were able to do that and just control the last minute and a half with Morgan (Thompson) and Alicia (McClain) handling the ball up top, we were going to be fine.”

Scotland also defeated Lumberton (0-4) on Dec. 4 in Robeson County in a 48-26 result; the Pirates hadn’t played a game since then until Monday.

“Lumberton is a tough team,” Roshien McClain said. “They’re well-coached, they’re well-disciplined, too. They don’t overreact to a lot of things. They (Lumberton) play real hard. They scheme real well. They understand the assignments they have for each other. So it was just us playing our game and people just doing their job out there.”

Scotland had a halftime lead of 22-17 before Lumberton’s Gabryell Locklear brought it to a two-point game with a 3 from the right corner. But the proceeding 10 points were all scored by Alicia McClain, and Kayla Simmons also added a layup, capping off a 12-0 scoring run by the Lady Scots.

“Most of my shots weren’t falling,” Alicia McClain said. “So, my dad (Roshien McClain) was like, ’Just attack the basket. They can’t guard you.’ So that’s what I was on, just attacking the whole time.”

“We are well equipped to play slow or fast,” Roshien McClain said. “We came out in the third quarter and made a little run, which was the real key. We changed up some things at halftime and went with a different setup with people in different spots. So that was able to push the lead ahead.”

After Lumberton’s Charley Whitley broke the Scotland scoring streak with a trey, Alicia McClain hit a free throw, then a layup, before Whitley came back with another 3-ball to make the score 37-26 still in Scotland’s favor at the end of the third quarter.

Nine seconds into the fourth quarter, Whitley hit another shot from beyond-the-arc. Scotland and Lumberton traded two-point baskets the following four possessions, then 3-pointers on the two after that, with Hammonds hitting the trey for the Lady Scots; Hammonds hit another one the next go-around, which gave Scotland the 47-36 lead with 2:11 remaining.

Lumberton had a 7-3 advantage with 5:34 left in the first quarter, and after a layup by Nyasia McQueen and a free throw from Alicia McClain, made it 9-6 with a baseline jumper from Jaelyn Hammond. The Lady Scots used three free throws from Hammonds and another from Alicia McClain to go up 10-9 and led 12-11 as time expired after a turnaround hook shot by Lumberton’s Florence Ferguson was answered with a shot at the rim by Dixon.

Scotland started to separate itself in the second quarter, opening it up with a 10-2 run, six of which were scored by Thompson, to move ahead 22-13. Whitley hit a runner with 3:23 left in the first half, and BreAndrea Glover made a layup on the possession afterward, but neither team scored anymore in the last little less than three minutes of the period.

“Their (Lumberton) ball-handling is a little off, so we just started applying pressure more in the second (quarter),” Alicia McClain said. “We were running an ‘m-and-m’ where we push up, trap, and it was turning the ball over a lot. So we were like, let’s run that. That’s working. We were getting turnovers. Morgan got some buckets. I got some buckets. Madie (Hammonds) hit some 3s. So that’s what was working.”

Alicia McClain scored a team-high 19 points for Scotland; Hammonds had 12; and Thompson had nine.

Whitley led Lumberton with 15 points. Locklear had 11 points, and Andrea Brown had eight; Brown shot the only two free throws of the night for Lumberton, both of which were missed.

Scotland returns to Sandhills Athletic Conference play against Southern Lee in Sanford Friday.

“We’re just looking forward to having some practice time now,” Roshien McClain said. “We had one practice a while (back) before Jack Britt. I’m going to give them off Wednesday. Then we’re going to practice Thursday and get ready for Southern Lee and Marlboro (County) on Friday and Saturday.”

Fighting Scots go down against Pirates

With the way the first showdown between the Scotland Fighting Scots men’s basketball team and the Lumberton Pirates went in Robeson County on Dec. 4, with the Scots coming away with a 44-38 victory, it was apparent it’d be another close game between the two teams on Monday after the first quarter saw just nine combined points scored and a 5-4 Scotland lead.

And while it stayed relatively close until late in the fourth quarter, the result went the other way this time as Lumberton defeated Scotland 46-38 in Laurinburg.

“It’s like I told them, if you don’t score over 40 (points), you’re not winning any high school game,” Scotland head coach Michael Malpass said. “I mean, you have to score points because I don’t think we played necessarily terrible defense. I just think it’s very discouraging when it’s so hard to score. So, in the last two out of three losses, we’ve held our opponent in the 40s. Those are games you can win if you can just get some points. Somebody said last year when we graduated, we graduated a lot of point production, and we said early this year we’d take a balanced approach, and we’re just not getting it done yet.”

Scotland drops below .500 at 3-4 for the first time since the 2021-22 season. Jaiquez Caldwell scored 12 points to lead the Scots, Dajuan Gibson had 10, and Tashad Russell had eight.

“We’re going to have to probably, I told the guys, be a press team this year,” Malpass said. “I don’t think it’s simply because of a lack of a lot of practice. I just think we’re still trying to figure out what gives these guys the best chance to score and utilize our athletic ability. And so, we’re probably going to have to kind of sell-out more to a faster tempo just to create more downhill, more rim attacks, things we’re not doing in the half-court.”

The win for Lumberton is its first this season, now at 1-3.

“He’s (Bryant Edwards) a great coach,” Malpass said on Lumberton’s head coach. “They’ve been to a state title; I know his pedigree. They’re really good at helping. And in their zone offenses, they did some screening on the baseline that we just saw the first time. And we didn’t play high hedge; we went under them, and you can’t do that. You have to go over the top and force it into a small part of the court, the corners. The fear is always you play somebody that you beat there (at Lumberton), and they hadn’t won a game until tonight, so they were really hungry.”

Lumberton’s first basket came four seconds into the first quarter when Damian Robinson lobbed it to Jaiden Shephard from half-court for an alley-oop layup. The game’s next points didn’t come for over four minutes, though. After both teams struggled to make a shot, Russell finally made one — a 3-pointer — to put Scotland ahead with 3:44 left in the frame. Robinson made a layup before Jonathan Graham hit a pullup jumper on the baseline near the end of the first.

Scotland held its largest lead of the second quarter of three points three different times, but Lumberton went on an 11-0 run in the final 2:46 of the half to lead 19-11 at the interlude.

“If you look at where we’re at so far, we’ve won one close game at Lumberton,” Malpass said. “The other close games have sort of went the other way, whether it was late, in the third quarter, or whatever. And so, (at Lumberton), we were able to triangle out each quarter and sort of just make it a slugfest. And here, we tried to do that early, but you can’t really do that playing from behind. That’s one of the strategies to murk a game up.”

Robinson connected on a layup 70 seconds into the third quarter to put the Pirates up 10 before 13 of the eventuate 17 points were scored by the Scots, including eight by Gibson, to bring it to a two-point game. With 1:05 remaining in the period, Lumberton increased its lead to 30-25, but Caldwell drained a 3 to put it back to a one-possession game for Scotland. After Lumberton’s Dimitrious Jones and Shephard went 3 of 4 on two trips at the free-throw line, Caldwell was fouled on a 3-point try with a second left in the third but made just one of his three free throws to help Scotland be down only 33-29.

“I do feel like, in the third quarter, we drew some things up for them to do it, and whether they don’t understand what we’re telling them, but they were going under ball screens all night,” Malpass said on his team. “And when you turn that edge, they’re giving you the three-(point) line, and we don’t even see it. It’s going to be a tough deal if we don’t figure something out.”

After going down by seven with 6:32 left, Caldwell and Dylan Lampley combined to make five free throws to make Scotland’s hole 38-34 with 3:37 left. The dagger from Lumberton came when they scored the following five points and held Scotland scoreless until 42 seconds remained when Lampley made a layup. Jones made two free throws, and Shephard added another for the Pirates before Caldwell went to the basket for an open layup as the clock reached all zeroes after that.

Jones had 16 points, and Shephard had 13 for Lumberton.