Poor shooting dooms Raiders; Three-point shooting barrage spurs girls to win

ROCKINGHAM — The shots were there, they just didn’t fall Friday night.

An off shooting night, coupled with the Pirates’ physicality, plagued the Richmond Senior High School varsity boys’ basketball team in a 64-58 loss to Lumberton.

The Raiders (3-2, 2-1 SAC) had opportunities. They got into the paint, they drove to the rim, they grabbed offensive rebounds and they had open three-point shots, they just didn’t fall at the clip they needed them to.

“It was on us — they didn’t really do anything special,” said senior forward Nygie Stroman. “We didn’t finish around the basket or make easy shots; stuff that we practice. If we made the easy shots, we would have easily won that game.”

The loss was Richmond’s second against the Lumberton (5-1, 3-1 SAC) this season. The Raiders fell on the road to the Pirates 67-52 on Jan. 19.

“We missed a lot of wide open layups,” said head coach Donald Pettigrew. “They did a good job defensively, but we missed a lot of shots, too. Not doing the little things hurt us tonight. We have to get better at doing the little things like boxing out, getting back on D and getting after loose balls.”

Senior guard Dylan Lewis said Lumberton’s constant hustle makes them a consistently tough team to play against. Stroman, who was the only Raider in double figures with 17 points, said they knew that the Pirates were going to be a scrappy team and that they would have to match their physicality.

“They knock down shots, they’ve got that No. 0 (Charlie Miller), he’s a shooter,” Lewis said. “They have some shooters, they rebound, they hustle and they just get after it.”

Freshman guard Paul McNeil and senior guard Patrick McLaughlin each scored eight points, while junior guard Xavier Collazo finished with seven points.

The Raiders jumped out to an early 10-5 lead, and at least at the start, were able to pick their spots and get baskets in the paint, but Lumberton responded with a 7-0 run and the two teams were tied 14-14 at the end of the first quarter.

The Pirates took a 28-26 lead into halftime as the Raiders struggled to hit shots, particularly several open looks from three-point range.

Despite Richmond shifting to an extended 1-3-1 a few minutes into the second half, the Pirates did most of their damage in the third quarter with several runs, outscoring the Raiders 17-12.

After Lumberton had built the lead up to 12, a 5-0 Richmond run to end the quarter cut the deficit to 7 heading into the fourth.

The Raiders managed to cut the lead five about midway through the fourth quarter, but the Pirates went on a 6-0 run, running the floor and scoring baskets in transition to push the lead back to double digits and seal the win.

“The last two minutes, coach was telling us that we should have been playing harder,” Lewis said. “He was right — we should have just came more prepared to play.”

Lady Raiders top Lumberton behind three-point shooting

A three-point shooting barrage helped lift the Richmond Senior High School girls’ basketball team to a 59-42 win over Lumberton Friday night.

The first and third quarters were where the Lady Raiders (5-3, 3-2 SAC) were able to do most of their damage from long range. Four separate players made a three-point shot in the first quarter, then senior guard Jayla McDougald hit three of them on her own in the third quarter.

“I knew if we wanted to keep the lead, I had to start making some threes,” McDougald said, who had 21 points to lead the Lady Raiders, including 15 in the third quarter.

“I know when I get started, the rest of my team gets hot, so I just stopped thinking about it and started shooting.”

Coupled with the outside shooting, senior forward Jakerra Covington consistently found success in the paint all game, grabbing offensive rebounds, drawing fouls and getting putbacks at the rim. She finished with 15 points for the Lady Raiders.

“We usually like to try to play from the inside-out, but we have great shooters on our team,” said head coach Teddy Moseley. “Once they start making shots, it frees up the inside for us.”

Sophomore guard Kyla Sampson scored six points, while junior guard Allyiah Swiney had four points and senior guard Asia Douglas added five points.

Lumberton’s 1-3-1 extended zone forced a few Richmond turnovers at first early in the game, but then the Lady Raiders started hitting those outside shots.

“We watched film, so we knew what they were going to be running,” McDougald said. “We knew what their weak side was, so we knew we had to hit our shots so they would fall off a little bit because they were playing really aggressive at first.”

The Lady Raiders’ ability to find the space in the zone and hit those three-pointers forced the Lady Pirates to drop back into a 2-3 zone.

“We settled down,” Moseley said. “The main thing was we were able to attack the gaps. We knew they had a bunch of gaps in their zone and we were able to find those gaps with the skip passes.”

Lumberton (2-4, 1-3 SAC) had plenty of offensive possessions and scoring opportunities, but were repeatedly done in by a seemingly uncountable number of travelling violations in the first half.

“We had a gameplan,” Moseley said, “and we finally executed our gameplan on the offensive and defensive side.”