First Posted: 4/29/2010

LAURINBURG Conference races tend to be very tight as you get down to the end of the regular season and with Lumberton right in the thick of things, it could’ve been easy for them to lose their focus Wednesday night.
Despite a bump early in the game, the Pirates avoided falling victim to that scenario.
Lumberton (13-8, 6-3) rallied from a 2-0 deficit to pick up a 5-3 win on Scotland’s Senior Night at McCoy Field.
It was a big game for us, said Lumberton coach Paul Hodges. We told the kids that if we could win tonight and just take care of our business, then let the chips fall into place.
Lack of run support spoiled a solid outing from Curt Britt.
The sophomore hurler dropped to 6-3 on the year in a complete game effort, allowing five runs on four hits with a pair of free passes and eight strikeouts.
They (Lumberton) got some hits in the ball game and so did we, but what really hurt us was when we left the bases loaded in the fourth, Scotland coach Tommy Britt said. It seems like every time we had runners in scoring position, we had two outs. Bottom line is, they were able to get two big hits with two outs and we couldn’t get any.
After Scotland took a 2-0 lead after a two-run single by Derek Barnes, the Pirates tied it up in top of the third on a two-out, two-run single by Austin McNeill.
The junior was the lone Lumberton player with multiple hits, finishing 2-for-4.
We had a couple of big two-out hits and that’s something that we’ve been lacking the last few games, said Hodges on the two-out hitting. They were key for us, we were able to run the bases well to push another run across. Every time that they (Scotland) scored, we were able to answer back.
The Pirates made it 3-2 on an RBI single from Dakota Oxendine and added two insurance runs in the fourth, scoring on a botched pickoff attempt.
Justin Leggett added the last run on an RBI single.
After cutting the lead to 5-3 in the bottom of the inning, the Scots had a chance with the bases loaded to add more but Damien Burr struck out to end the threat. Overall, Scotland (11-11, 3-6) stranded 10 runners.
Thomas Williams improved to 5-4 on the season with an eight-strikeout complete game. He allowed only four hits, but walked seven.
Lumberton closes out its regular season at home against cross-country rival Purnell Swett at 7 p.m. today.