MERRY HILL – Spirit.

Lawrence Academy’s girls basketball team showed plenty of it Monday night in their Tarheel Independent Conference game even though the final score didn’t reflect their effort as they fell to Pungo Academy, 42-21, and dipped to 0-4 in league play.

Holly McNair paced the Lady Warriors with a nine-point effort. Hallie Corbett had seven while Patricia Lunsford and Sydney Brabble scored two each.

Despite poor shooting in the first half and trailing by as many as a dozen in the second half, Lawrence mounted a furious rally in the third quarter.  They got within two points with two minutes remaining in the quarter before finally succumbing to the Lady Raider’s defense.

“We just couldn’t get any shots in the world to fall to start off with,” said coach Frank Baker. “It seemed like everything they threw up wouldn’t go in.

“But they came out in the third quarter playing strong,” he added. “We just didn’t quite get there.”

Thanks to a strong inside presence in the early going coupled with great offensive rebounding, Pungo charged out to an 8-0 lead to open the contest before Baker called his first time-out to allow his team to regroup.

Lawrence began to assert itself in the paint as Corbett was fouled and dropped a pair of free throws to get the home team on the scoreboard, but Pungo closed out the eight minutes with another run and led it, 11-2.

Neither team could generate much offense in the second quarter and Lawrence’s shooting woes continued as at one point they missed 16 field goals.

Pungo wasn’t faring much better finding the basket and the quarter ended with the two teams scoring just five points between them for a 15-3 halftime score.

Then came the third quarter.

McNair started things off for the home team with a pair of quick layups to make it, 15-7. Pungo made a free throw to stop the run, but McNair came back with a put-back to cut the deficit back to seven points.

The game became physical underneath and on the wings with 17 fouls whistled in the quarter.

Aiding Lawrence’s comeback effort was Pungo’s poor performance at the charity stripe where the Lady Raiders were just 4-for-8 in free throws.

In the back-and-forth contest, Corbett and Brabble scored to Lawrence within seven again before Lunsford’s follow-up layup spun around the basket before dropping through and Lawrence was within five at 20-15.

Pungo coach Melanie Sawyer then called time-out and coming out of that short breather Pungo got back on track with a 7-0 run to close the quarter and lead it, 27-15.

Again in the fourth quarter Lawrence lost its shooting touch.  McNair got a layup and a free throw for their only offense for the first five minutes as Pungo began to run in its transition game and start to break things open.

The Lady Raiders closed things out with a 10-3 run, but Lawrence got some satisfaction in their only points late coming on a Corbett three-pointer just before the final buzzer sounded.

Lawrence (0-12) plays it’s next five games on the road beginning Friday night at Columbia with their next home date coming on January 25.