Burgaw — The aura of Pender County High School’s gym helps Patriot teams get an early advantage. The combination theatre/gym, high-ceiling setting is unlike most others in the state.

Of course, before the gym comes the wall lined with near life-sized photos of each of the numerous state and regional championship girls’ teams from the past four years.

Getting adjusted to the surroundings quickly is a must for any visitor.

North Johnston tried to do it twice this week in the NCHSAA basketball playoffs and failed both times.

Pender County’s boys’ squad bounced North Johnston’s boys on Tuesday night. The Patriots downed the Panthers 69-40 in a first round game.

Then the Panther girls’ squad got off to the worst start anyone could imagine, falling in a 21-0 hole en route to a 63-26 defeat in a second- round game on Wednesday night.

“We came in here and were in awe,” said North girls’ coach David Bagwell. “We’d heard so much about them, all of the tall tales — that they had three six-footers — and there wasn’t anybody near six feet on the court. We saw all of the banners and just weren’t ready.”

North Johnston’s girls had 13 first-quarter turnovers, while Pender was able to get off 18 field goal attempts in the quarter, which enabled it to shake off a temporary off start offensively as well.

The Patriots did have some early trouble against North’s man-to-man defense. The game was scoreless for nearly four minutes of play.

“We need to get focused a little more before Friday night,” said Pender County coach Gary Battle. “They played us man-to-man and we were a little sluggish and didn’t adjust to it well at first.”

Pender (27-1) goes for a berth in next week’s regional tournament tonight (Friday) when it visits Clinton Union (26-2).

“We wanted to do some of the same things we do against other teams,” Bagwell said. “We had planned on using our full-court pressure to start the game just because we’re used to doing that.

“But we had such trouble keeping the ball that we couldn’t even get shots off, much less make one so we could set up our defense.”

North didn’t put a mark on the scoreboard until Amanda Sharpe fed an in bound pass to LeAnne Birdsall in the paint for a short jumper with 4:56 to play in the first half.

That success didn’t bear many others for the remainder of the half, and Pender led 31-4 at the break.

Pender County standouts Muriel Seabrooks and Jannetta Robinson shined offensively. Seabrooks finished with 12 points, 12 rebounds and six assists.

Robinson, who scored her 1,000th career point in the Pats’ 87-20 first-round win over Princeton, led all scorers with 20 points. She added 10 rebounds as well.

“We got a taste of it last year, going to regionals,” Battle said.

“We’ve got seven seniors and they’ve worked hard all year to put themselves in a position to get back there.” North Johnston finished the season with a 20-7 record and won the Carolina 1-A Conference regular-season championship.

“One thing we need to do before next year is develop a more assertive attitude inside,” Bagwell said. “We tried to do some of that in the second half tonight.”

The Panthers’ strength for 2008-09 should be its inside game with front line players Birdsall, Britney Keene and Ellen Wheeler returning as starters.

Birdsall and Keene had six points each to lead North. Senior guard Haley Newsome had five in her final game for the Panthers, with fellow graduating back court mate Amanda Sharpe.

North’s third senior, forward Taylor Allen, was lost near the mid-point of the season with torn knee ligaments.

Allen continued to travel and work with the Panther squad after her injury. She assisted with pregame warm-ups and kept statistics on the bench during games.

“They’ve won three conference championships for us,” Bagwell said of the trio. “And each one of them does their own thing. We could never make up for what they’ve done for our team.

“We’ll miss them for their attitudes and their drive. I couldn’t have asked for any more for them because they’ve done it all.”

During their three-year varsity careers, North Johnston won 55 games.

On Tuesday night, the Pender County boys’ team took control of the contest with 20-point offerings in the second and third quarter. The Patriots led 18-11 after a quarter but outscored the Panthers 20-7 in the second quarter.

Rayford Henkins led Pender (21-5) with 26 points. Corey Branch added 20. The Patriots met Carolina 1-A Conference champ Ayden-Grifton on Thursday night.

Junior Josh Best led North with 11 points, while Justin Price finished with 10.

Seven members of the Panthers’ boys squad capped their prep careers on Tuesday night: Daniel Radford, Jermaine Grimes, Travis Pope, De’Edrick Hall, Adam Nixon and Clif Holloman.