Cape Fear Christian Academy scored a varsity basketball sweep over visiting Lakewood on Wednesday.

Cape Fear Christian surged in the third quarter and held off a fourth-quarter rally to win 58-54 over Lakewood in the girls game.

“We’re still working on our guard play,” said Cape Fear Christian girls coach Bobby Lamb. “Right now, it’s hurting us because we’re making a lot of turnovers. The turnovers got them back into the game. What helped us pull away was we had Meredith Taylor start leaking out along with Zykia (Matthews). That made a difference in the ball game, those two bigs right there. Also, E.J. (Ella John Dupree) came in and hit some big shots.”

Junior Zykia Matthews had 23 points and senior Kristen Bass and freshman Meredith Taylor had 10 points apiece to lead the Eagles (5-2).

Ella John Dupree had seven points and Aubree Bass and Talisha McNeill had four points apiece.

Rilya Mitchell had 18 points, Precious King had 13 points and Jordynn Bailey had 11 points to pace the Leopards (1-3).

With CFCA holding a 32-30 lead late in the third quarter, Bass scored to start the Eagles on an 8-0 run for a 10-point lead at the end of the quarter.

Early in the fourth, a three and a score from Dupree gave the Eagles their largest lead of the game, at 47-34. But Lakewood responded with seven unanswered points to cut the lead to six.

Free throw shooting helped CFCA hold Lakewood off down the stretch, as the Eagles shot a perfect 6-for-6 in the fourth quarter, with four coming from Kristen Bass and two coming from McNeill.

“The girls practice free throws for at least about 20 minutes of practice,” Lamb said. “Now it’s starting to pay off, because you can win a game by knocking down free throws.”

Lakewood was able to cut the lead to as low as four, but time ran out on the rally.

Despite some struggles in the second quarter, Cape Fear Christian won an 87-37 rout over Lakewood in the boys game.

“Our starters do a good job, usually, of coming in and setting the tone,” said Cape Fear Christian boys coach Kalen Eddings. “One of our biggest advantages, we think, is our depth. We’ve got 10, 11, 12 guys that can play. So, when that second group comes in, they know they’ve got to be better. And we talked to them about that at halftime. But we feel pretty confident that we can sub in, especially at the one, two and three, and not really lose too much as far as scoring and taking care of the ball. That second group’s got to do a little bit better job of executing and they’ll be fine. Last game, some of those guys didn’t touch the floor too much, so I think it was a little bit just getting settled in.”

Four players scored in double figures for the Eagles (7-2). Junior Paul Tako had 16 points, senior Jeremyah McWilliams had 14 points, senior Austin Locklear had 11 points and freshman Zeke Brock had 10 points.

David Okraprizda, Jamael Carter, Milos Prodanovic and Eli O’Brien had seven points apiece. DeShawn Woods had six points. Alijah Miles had two points.

Eddings was pleased with the play of his big men on the interior.

“In our two losses, we didn’t do a good job of getting the ball inside to our big guys to start the game,” Eddings said. “Our emphasis as of late has been trying to get it inside to those guys early to create some inside-out opportunities for our shooters, but just to get the big guys going. We ask a lot of those guys and getting them going early has been a goal of ours and we’ve done well the last two games getting it inside.”

Freshman Kaleb James paced the Leopards (0-5) with 18 points, 15 of which came in the second quarter.

“Hold him under double digits was our goal for the night and we missed out on that,” Eddings said. “But we kind of got into them at halftime about defense and in the second half we played some better defense.”

With Cape Fear Christian leading 26-9 early in the second quarter after a strong start, Lakewood rallied with 12 unanswered points to cut the lead to five. But the Eagles finished the second on an 11-6 run to lead 37-27 at halftime.

CFCA dominated the second half, outscoring Lakewood 24-7 in the third quarter and 26-3 in the fourth.

Cape Fear Christian is at home against Grace Christian on Thursday. Grace won a varsity sweep over visiting CFCA on Nov. 21.

Lakewood is at home against Sampson County rival Midway on Friday.