By the end of the third quarter, Lumberton trailed 42-33 after holding a 27-18 lead over Sacred Heart at halftime. In what would be a second half of runs, the Panthers capitalized in a 52-48 overtime win over the Crusaders.
After a quick basket by Lumberton (9-9, 3-1), Sacred Heart’s offense ignited in the third quarter as it went on a 21-2 run. At the helm of this nine-point comeback was freshman Gracie Falla, who posted 11 of her team-leading 17 points in the quarter.
“We’re a different basketball team, especially defensively with Falla just because she has great instinct,” Sacred Heart coach Caleb Vaughan said. “She reads the ball really well coming off people’s hands but tonight she scored the ball for us a lot and it was off of steals and getting out in transition.”
Falla’s defensive play allowed her to find openings in the fast break and use the transitions to put up easy layups through the Panther defense.
“Gracie just makes all the right plays,” Vaughan said. “She doesn’t do anything phenomenal, she’s just where she’s supposed to be and she makes the right play. We called timeout and we told the girls ‘Lumberton is a good team. We have to put them away. They just aren’t going to go away because they are down 11.’”
Despite blowing a nine-point lead and finding themselves down 11 points, the Panthers did not fade away.
“Usually we have a bad quarter every game and tonight [the third quarter] was just our quarter,” Lumberton coach Thoriano Edwards said. “I’m proud of the way they fought in the fourth quarter, because we scored almost three maybe four points in the [third] quarter and it almost hurt us and almost came back to bite us.”
Lumberton stopped the fast break by switching to a full-court press which allowed them to get the needed turnovers to stay in the game.
“We tried to run them out of motion on offense and the movement on offense helped us out as far as turning them out,” Edwards said. “Then on defense, it really was all stapled, and once we got our pressure defense going, it kind of got a chance to wear them out a little bit and get them tired.”
Lumberton tied the game at 46-46, but each team was given the opportunity to seal the win. The Panthers were fouled and toed the free throw line with 15 seconds to go, but missed the potential game-winner. Sacred Heart was then fouled with two seconds, then like the Panthers, missed the free throw to force overtime.
Momentum stayed with the Panthers after it outscored Sacred Heart in the fourth quarter, 13-4. They outscored the Crusaders 6-2 in overtime to seal the win.
“[A positive takeaway was] the fact that they didn’t quit,” Edwards said. “Usually my girls will stop playing when they encounter some adversity, but tonight they kept playing and I was very proud.”
Lumberton 71 Sacred Heart 51
The Panthers (9-9, 3-1) came away a solid 71-51 win over Sacred Heart (1-19, 0-2), which has now dropped 12 games in a row.
The Crusaders challenged Lumberton’s lead early on and scored the most points it had all season. After being down 20-9 at the end of the first quarter, Sacred Heart cut the lead 20-15 at the start of the second quarter.
Lumberton took a 37-26 lead at halftime and stayed in the driver’s seat for the rest of the night.
Despite the double-digit lead, Sacred Heart never truly faded while facing a 61-41 deficit at the end of the fourth quarter. The Crusaders were able to outscore the Panthers 17-10 in the final quarter as the team never showed signs of quitting.
“Let’s give my guys credit for [never quitting],” Vaughan said. “We started three freshmen and two 10th graders tonight and that’s been the whole season pretty much. My kids played really, really hard. We’ve battled the flu here. We had some kids in [Washington D.C.]. We’ve had six to seven kids in practice the last 10 days, so the kids that have been here have been working and they played their tails off.”
The Sacred Heart boys and girls will play Salem at home Friday, while the Lumberton boys and girls will go on the road to play East Marion.
