Daniels’ late spark seals the deal as Tornadoes top Pirates

FAIRMONT — Through the first 30 minutes of Fairmont’s game against Lumberton Friday, Caleb Daniels hadn’t scored for the Golden Tornadoes. He had barely even played, with just one short stint early in the contest.

But after reentering the game in the final minutes with the Golden Tornadoes leading by three, he got open in the corner and jacked up a deep 3, which touched nothing but nylon.

Daniels ultimately scored eight points in the final 1:47 of the game, helping Fairmont seal a 59-53 win over the Pirates seven days after Lumberton beat them in the season opener.

“It was just about the moment,” Daniels said. “When your name gets called off the bench, be ready, be prepared and be locked in.”

After Daniels’ triple put Fairmont (1-2) up 48-42, he drew an offensive foul on the Pirates’ next possession. Each team turned the ball over once, then Daniels scored on a pair of breakaway layups, stretching the lead to 52-43 with 1:11 remaining.

“He’s capable of it,” Fairmont coach Montrell McNair said. “He does it in practice, when he’s open we know he’s going to knock that shot down. He’s a smart player and he plays to his ability. He don’t try to play above his ability, he just lets the game come to him. He does a lot of good things; he even stepped in and took a charge, so that’s something that he’s trying to get better at is playing on both sides of the ball, and I think he did that tonight.”

Lumberton (2-1) hit three 3-pointers in the final 50 seconds, but Fairmont hit seven free throws in the final minute, including one by Daniels and four by Xavier Johnson, to keep the Pirates at arms’ length.

Fairmont avenged the 43-35 loss it suffered Nov. 15 at Lumberton.

“It was a big win,” Fairmont’s Landon Cummings said. “We had this game circled after that game Friday night. We went back to practice and went back to the drawing board, went hard in practice, Coach Tron prepared us for the game and we came out on top.”

The Golden Tornadoes led 23-16 at halftime and extended that advantage to 34-24 after a Josiah Billings putback with 2:08 left in the third. Lumberton triples by Lonnie Porter and Nate Lawson and Jaiden Shephard later made back-to-back layups as part of a 13-4 run that got the Pirates within one at 38-37 with 6:21 to go; Lumberton twice more got within a single point, but could never find the key basket to take the lead.

From a 43-42 Fairmont lead, the Golden Tornadoes got two free throws from Johnson to go up three with 3:06 left, setting up Daniels’ big 3 a few moments later.

“We couldn’t convert,” Lumberton coach Bryant Edwards said. “They had 19 turnovers to our nine, and we just could not convert. Props to them, they bullied us tonight, they dominated the glass, it is what it is. They had 14 offensive rebounds and they scored on nine of them. That’s a backbreaker, you can’t do that against a Fairmont team.”

“Basketball is a game of runs. They went on their run, so it was time for us to go on our run,” Landon Cummings said. “Coach just told us to stay locked in; we weren’t hitting shots, but shots were eventually going to start falling, and then that’s what happened.”

Lumberton led 10-6 at the end of the first quarter and 14-10 midway through the second quarter before Fairmont ended the first half on a 13-4 run to take its seven-point halftime lead.

“The key was we did a good job rebounding and defending and forcing them into tough shots,” McNair said. “I thought we did a good job tonight of group rebounding at times. We didn’t do such a good job late in the game of group rebounding, but the first half we did a good job getting it out and attacking.”

Landon Cummings had 14 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals for Fairmont. Xavion Pittman had 10 points with seven rebounds, Johnson and Daniels each finished with eight points and Josiah Billings had seven points, 13 rebounds and three blocks.

Ayden Cummings had seven points with five assists as the point guard led the offense for the Golden Tornadoes.

“He grew up tonight,” McNair said. “He did a good job Tuesday against Seventy-First with the pressure, and he also did a good job tonight. … Don’t worry about the mistakes, keep playing, and he grew up a little bit tonight.”

Shephard had 24 points with 11 rebounds for Lumberton, another strong showing after a 26-point, 18-rebound performance against Hoke County on Wednesday. But the Pirates struggled to provide complementary production; Nate Lawson did score nine points and Ayvan Redic had six.

“You expect big games from your senior, he’s been battle-tested through this whole while, so I expect him to be very consistent throughout the year, I expect him to be able to produce in big games,” Edwards said. “But also, we’ve got to help him spread the floor. We have to get defenses out of the paint.”

For the Golden Tornadoes, beating a strong Lumberton team for their first win after losing their first two games could be a spark, McNair said.

“That’s a confidence builder for them, they don’t feel like they’ve not been good because they haven’t won a game,” McNair said. “These are playoff teams and we compete with them. I told them just keep their head up, keep playing, keep plugging, keep executing and the results will come and tonight we got them.”

Lumberton, meanwhile, walks away with lessons learned after its first loss of the season.

“That’s a good ball team, and if we’re going to lose, losing to them we can actually learn some stuff from it,” Edwards said. “Going forward, I think we’ll be better. I definitely think everybody saw the worst version of us tonight, especially going forward.”

Duran, defense lead Fairmont girls to win

While Aaliyah Duran starred on the middle-school hardwood for three straight county championships at South Robeson, a lot of Robeson County fans were introduced to Fairmont’s freshman guard on Friday — and were surely impressed by what they saw.

Duran scored 13 points, hitting three first-half 3-pointers to lead the Golden Tornadoes to a 56-24 win over Lumberton.

“I feel like I’ve made my statement as a freshman this year, and I feel like moving forward I’ll be even better than what I’m doing right now,” Duran said. “I felt like I shot really good and I was able to get those shots off because my teammates made good passes; they were looking for me because I was hot.”

Duran hit back-to-back triples to give Fairmont (2-0) a 10-4 lead midway through the first quarter. As the Golden Tornadoes used an 18-2 run to build their lead through the second quarter, Duran hit three more baskets in a 70-second span, including another 3, to extend the lead to 30-10 with 2:30 left in the first half; Fairmont led 30-12 at halftime.

“I’ve been seeing it since fifth, sixth grade,” Fairmont coach Marcus Thompson said. “She’s another person who’s dedicated her time to the gym ever since I’ve met her. She’s been putting in a lot of time, a lot of work.”

While Duran starred offensively, the Golden Tornadoes defense held Lumberton (1-2) without a field goal for a 19-minute stretch spanning from late in the first quarter to early in the fourth. Before the Pirates ended the drought with back-to-back 3s by Gabby Locklear that opened the fourth-quarter scoring, Fairmont’s lead was 45-14; the Golden Tornadoes outscored the Pirates 15-2 in the third quarter, led by six points in the period from Taniya Simms.

“Defense is always going to be the staple here,” Thompson said. “That’s something that I believe is the most important, I think defense says a lot about the sacrifices you’re willing to make. Because everybody wants to shoot, everybody don’t want to play D.”

“Fairmont is a tough team,” Lumberton coach Ivy Johnson said. “They’ve got some good defense and pressure defense and they’re pretty athletic across the board. But we’ve still got to take better care of the ball. Some of that comes with a little bit better decision making, and just being able to kind of help each other out.”

While Duran led Fairmont in scoring, several other Tornadoes players made big contributions. Simms scored 12 points with six rebounds, Jaliyah Stephens scored eight points, Miah Smith added seven points and Niah Smith and Laila Grady each scored six points, with Grady grabbing six rebounds. Lyric McNair had seven rebounds for Fairmont.

“This is one of those teams to where any given night, we can get it from about nine to 10 players,” Thompson said. “If we can just keep kids in the Fairmont, Orrum and Rowland area working hard and putting in the time, especially those younger girls — it just shows the work pays off.”

Locklear scored 10 points for Lumberton and Sanaa Lesane had seven points. Marseaunna Dockery led the Pirates with eight rebounds and Charley Whitley pulled down seven.

“Two of our first three games are against a pretty tough team, so just trying to move on from this and say, hey, we’ve got 20 more games to play this season,” Johnson said. “I think they’ll bounce back, it’s a pretty eager group to do well, so I think we’ll bounce back to do well.”

Fairmont beat the Pirates for the second straight Friday night after a 62-45 win to open the season last week in Lumberton.

Fairmont hosts Richmond on Monday; Lumberton travels to Ashley on Tuesday.