Washington played deliberate, calculated basketball in the first half of Wednesday’s 2-A Eastern Carolina Conference matchup with North Lenoir. The Pam Pack, playing its third game in as many days, got the jump on the visiting Hawks in the first quarter.

After going tit-for-tat, Thomas Edwards and Tayevon Blackledge nailed back-to-back 3-pointers to give the home side an 11-5 lead in the early going. The Pam Pack led by as many as seven in the second quarter after Uriah Lawrence fed Jacquel Winfield under the basket.

Washington’s success came from establishing its half-court offense. It was patient in swinging the ball around the perimeter, driving the lane and kicking back out to create open shots.

“We don’t have a flat-out scorer. We’ve got to take the best option,” head coach Ralph Biggs said. “We were patient. Then we got impatient in the second half. … We’ve got too many guys who want to be a hero and not part of the team.”

But then North Lenoir got a handle of the game. It sped up the pace of the game by getting out in transition and converting on the run-and-gun opportunities. Washington was able to keep up from a speed standpoint, but was unable to score on a number of easy looks.

“My thing is that, you see a lot of our layups, we avoid contact,” Biggs explained. “That’s what’s wrong with us. We’re not as physical as other teams. You see the teams that play us. They look like athletes out there. You can tell they lift. Our athletes don’t look that way, and we’ve got to improve that.”

Washington went into halftime down 28-21 after senior guard Dakari Solomon drilled a 3-pointer later in the second quarter. Biggs and the coaching staff had their advice for the players, but it didn’t seem to click.

“We try to talk to about cleaning some things up,” he said. “We can talk and talk, but they’ve got to want it. They’ve got to change their mentality. They’ve got to change the way they approach the game. We can tell them all the right things, but it can’t be a tale of two halves all the time.

“The first half, they’ll listen to what we want to do. In the second half, you do what you want to do and it falls apart. They’re going to have to take it into their hands to keep up the intensity and keep up the concentration.”

Washington scored just 15 points in the entire second half, and many came in garbage time in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter. Just like that, a competitive game degraded into a nearly 40-point blowout at home.

The Pam Pack is still searching for all sorts of answers. The hope is that next week’s Northside Holiday Tournament will provide the team with a chance to step back and find something to build on while having some fun against Beaufort County rivals.

“We’re going to watch some video from the last few games,” Biggs said. “We’re going to practice hard. We can’t take it easy. We’ve got to practice hard and keep pushing them.

“This isn’t going to cut it. Washington can’t be 0-10. That’s not what Washington basketball is about.”