JACKSON — It was a tale of two halves.

After being up by one point at halftime, Jackson Academy came out and used a big third quarter to help get past Lamar School 70-38 in the all-Raider matchup at The Raider Dome Tuesday night.

“Our goal is going to have to execute to win games, that’s what makes us good,” said second-year Jackson Academy coach Josh Brooks. “Working together, playing together and running our offense, and it took us a while in this game to recognize what they were doing, and in the second half we settled down and made shots.”

Jackson Academy (3-3) was up 27-26 at halftime and then came into the third quarter and outscored Lamar 23-6 to build a 50-32 lead at the end of the quarter.

“We just quit attacking on offense and started to settle for long 3-point shots,” said Lamar coach Steve Nelson. “The bigger the lead, the more tense we got. The inexperience of playing and it being the first game as a whole team showed, and we didn’t make many free throws.”

Lamar (0-3) scored a total of 12 points in the second half.

Henry Lee had a game-high 13 points to lead Jackson Academy, while Wenton Walker and Will Travelstead added 11 points each for the Raiders.

“I told the guys at halftime, if we don’t execute, we won’t win, and we played what we are capable of being in the second half,” Brooks said. “Henry is one of the best players in all of MAIS and he’s a heck of a player. Wenton is our best player, and they were running a defense to try to limit his touches, and he took advantage of opportunities. Overall as a team, we got to be better in some areas.”

Hayden Reid, Josh Bakane and Thad Ransier all had six points each to lead Lamar. The Raiders have a quick turnaround as they travel to Pearl to face Park Place Christian on Thursday. 

“We’ve has six practices total as a whole team, so we’ve still got to learn how to work together,” Nelson said. “JA is a good basketball team, and we will get better.”