ST. PAULS — The fans that packed into the gymnasium at St. Pauls High School Tuesday night anticipated a close game between two boys basketball teams expected to be among the region’s best.

Instead they witnessed a dominant performance.

Visiting Lumberton had its way with St. Pauls from start to finish to earn a convincing 58-33 win.

“We boxed out as a team, we did very well as a team on the boards, so that was a main focus for us tonight,” Lumberton coach Bryant Edwards said. “As always, you hope shots fall, and they did early; they didn’t late. We got an early lead, and that’s a good team; they’ve got some dudes and they’re going to figure it out and be a tough team the end of the year.”

Lumberton (3-0) held advantages of 9-0, 17-4 and 28-6 as it built its lead over the first half.

“Lumberton’s a very good team; once they get on top of you they’re going to continue pounding you,” St. Pauls coach Corey Thompson said. “We just didn’t do a very good job of executing run-out stuff, and they did. A lot of one-on-one play tonight, and it showed.”

J.B. Brockington scored 17 points with seven rebounds and eight assists for Lumberton.

“The first half, I really wasn’t aggressive,” Brockington said. “At halftime, coach told me to be more aggressive, shoot more shots, get in the paint more, so that’s what I did and it just started opening it up for me. Shots were falling.”

Jacob Hammonds also scored 17 points for the Pirates, with four assists, and Tre Lewis had 12 points and nine rebounds.

Lumberton began the game on a 9-0 run, with five points in the span from Damian Robinson. Elijah Blanding got St. Pauls (1-1) on the board with a basket at the 4:35 mark of the opening quarter; Jacob Hammonds hit two 3-pointers for the Pirates over the duration of the period, and Lumberton took a 17-6 lead to the second quarter.

The Pirates’ run came as they forced numerous St. Pauls turnovers and forced the Bulldogs into many difficult shot attempts.

“That was another big thing in the scouting report was make them take tough shots,” Edwards said. “We didn’t want to bail them out and get them to the free-throw line a lot; we wanted them to take really tough shots, which they did.”

“I think we had 16 turnovers in the first half, it might have been more than that,” Corey Thompson said. “But even a lot of those turnovers, we weren’t being pressured, it was us not catching the ball with two hands, fundamental stuff, being careless with the ball. When you’re down that many points you can’t have turnovers and stuff like that.”

Lumberton scored the first 11 points of the second stanza, holding St. Pauls scoreless until the final two minutes of the half, to take a 28-6 lead. Antigone McCollum and Blanding each hit triples for St. Pauls before halftime, but Lumberton held a 32-12 lead at the break.

The Pirates opened the second half with an 11-0 run, featuring two baskets each from Hammonds and Tre Lewis, to make their lead 43-12 with 5:15 on the third-quarter clock. Lumberton led 50-26 at the end of the third.

Cameron Revels and Blanding each scored seven points and Lukus Osborne netted six for the Bulldogs.

Lumberton’s home game against Fairmont scheduled for Thursday has been postponed as renovations in Lumberton’s gym are not yet completed. Friday’s game against Pine Forest will now be an away game in Fayetteville; the Pirates enter the playoff rematch from last season with plenty of momentum after Tuesday’s dominant win.

“It’s a big statement, showing that we’ve grown and progressed and everything, showing that we’ve got something special at Lumberton and we can do something special this season,” Brockington said.

St. Pauls will host E.E. Smith on Friday as the Bulldogs hope to move forward from Tuesday’s defeat and use it as an early-season learning experience.

“You come back to practice tomorrow and you grind, you work, that’s what it is,” Thompson said. “There’s no feeling sorry for yourself; we play E.E. Smith on Friday night, and you just come back in and you work, that’s all you can do. There’s no magic pill, you just come back tomorrow and you work. Hats off to Lumberton, they did a great job, and we learned from it and we’ll get better.”

Early defense propels Lady Bulldogs past Pirates

In the St. Pauls girls basketball program’s first game on its home court under head coach Jaymar Thompson, the Lady Bulldogs relied on a staple of its three recent successful seasons under previous coach Mike Moses: defense.

The Bulldogs held Lumberton without a field goal for the first 10:40 of the game and cruised to a 62-35 win in nonconference play.

“It’s a rival, so you know anytime you’re playing against a cross-county team you want to get up for it,” St. Pauls coach Jaymar Thompson said. “We’ve been emphasizing defense a lot lately, so that’s big. Jakieya (Thompson) is our leader, so we’re going to go how she goes, and I think the girls are starting to realize that a little bit more. She’s got to carry us.”

Jakieya Thompson started the game with a personal 13-0 run for St. Pauls (2-1) over the first six-plus minutes; Lumberton (0-2) got on the scoreboard with three free throws before the end of the quarter and the Bulldogs led 18-3 after the opening stanza.

“They were feeding me, they knew I was hot so they just kept feeding me,” said Jakieya Thompson, who finished with 22 points, seven rebounds, four assists and six steals. “We just picked the energy up. We saw everybody out here, we’re trying to recover from the Terry Sanford game, so we just had to bring more energy.”

Lumberton hit its first field goal with 5:20 left in the half when Bre’Andrea Glover made a layup. The Pirates got within 11 points at 19-8 after a Carly Hammonds triple but St. Pauls stretched the lead back to 17 late in the second quarter; both teams ultimately scored 10 points in the period and the Bulldogs led 28-13 at halftime.

“They came out in a press and we weren’t able to get our head focused around what we needed to be doing in a press breaker,” Lumberton coach Ivy Johnson said. “We let that eat us up the first quarter. Anytime you score three points in a quarter, that’s not going to win any basketball game, so we’ve got to be aggressive from the get go. We’ve got to continue to attack gaps, fill the gaps, make sure that we’re all moving.”

The closest Lumberton got to St. Pauls in the second half was a 34-20 score after a Florence Ferguson basket with 2:50 left in the third. The Bulldogs then went on a 17-0 run stretching into the early minutes of the fourth, led by eight points in the stretch by Jashontae Harris; St. Pauls led 46-20 entering the fourth and 51-20 before consecutive 3-pointers by La’Kayia Hunt and Carly Hammonds ended the run. Four different players made 3-pointers for Lumberton in the fourth.

Behind Jakeiya Thompson’s play, Jashontae Harris scored 16 points with four assists for St. Pauls and AuNyah Teague scored 13 points with 10 rebounds. Aniyah Easterling had 10 steals.

Hammonds scored nine points to lead Lumberton, Hunt had eight and Gabby Locklear added seven.

Lumberton plays Friday at Pine Forest; St. Pauls plays Northeastern Saturday on a neutral floor in Rocky Mount.