The heavily favored Pinecrest boys allowed Lumberton to hover dangerously close until early in the fourth quarter of Friday night’s basketball game. Then the Patriots lowered the boom.

Just over five minutes remained in the Southeastern Conference contest after Demetri Sheridan made his 11th basket to cut the Patriot lead to 45-43. A moment later, Jvyhoun Justice fed Brendan Ortiz for a three-point play in transition that ignited a closing 17-1 run.

The 62-44 victory snapped a three-game losing streak for the Patriots, as they improved to 12-6 overall and 3-3 in the league. The Pirates dropped to 6-12 and 1-5.

Adam Cummings led the winners with 17 points, including going six-for-six from the foul line down the stretch. Justin Ray and Frankie Painter added 10 apiece. Sheridan led the home team with 22.

“Finishing strong is great, but you want to play like that the whole game and not just the fourth quarter,” said senior Frankie Painter, who contributed eight of his 10 points in the second half.

The Patriots rode the inside slashing of Justin Ray, and five points from Justice, to score 21 points in the second quarter. They might have been able to tuck this one away early, but for the inside play of Sheridan who scored 10 of his points in the period.

“It’s simple,” Patriot coach Andrew Lacey said of the problem the 6-foot-1 forward presented. “We let their guards get into the lane forcing our post defenders out and they were throwing the ball over to ‘34’ (Sheridan) for easy layups.

“In the second half we did a better job of keeping the guards out of the lane and our post players were able to box out and keep him off the glass.”

The Patriot defense led by Ortiz, who finished the game with eight points and five steals, limited the Pirates to just five baskets and 12 points in the second half.

Coming off consecutive conferences losses to Scotland, Richmond and Hoke, Ray and his teammates were all wearing their game faces.

“I try to stay in an attack mode as much as possible and stay aggressive offensively and defensively,” Ray said. “We do defense about 75 percent of the time in our practices and it showed with a victory.”

The Patriots head into Tuesday’s game against Scotland High in Laurinburg sitting in third place in the conference standings behind Hoke County (17-2, 5-0) and Richmond (14-5, 4-2).

Pinecrest 12 21 10 19 — 62

Lumberton 11 21 7 5 — 44

Pinecrest: Brower 1 0-0 2, Ortiz 3 2-2 8, Ray 5 0-0 10, Cummings 4 9-12 17, Wooten 2 1-2 5, Martin-Calhoun 1 0-0 2, Calhoun 1 1-2 3, Justice 2 0-0 5, Painter 4 2-4 10, Winter-McRae 0 0-0 0, Ivey 0 0-0 0, Kropp 0 0-0 0. Totals 23 15-22 62.

Lumberton: Floyd 0 0-0 0, Strother 0 1-4 1, Revels 1 1-2 3, Sampson 3 0-0 7, Deese 2 0-1 4, Sheridan 11 0-0 22, Johnson 1 0-0 3, Williams 0 1-2 1, Phillips 1 1-2 3. Totals 19 4-11 44.

Three-point goals: P 1 (Justice); L 2 (Sampson, Johnson).