North Rowan’s Cavaliers had a balanced scoring attack in their 75-53 basketball romp over Southwestern Randolph, but a lot of the points came from an unexpected source — power forward Marcus Lawing.

“I just had some open looks tonight, that’s all,” said the 6-2 junior after making two 3-pointers and scoring 14 points in the Cavaliers’ second-round victory in the state 2A playoffs.

Coach Kelly Everhart’s North team, 20-4 for the season, earned a berth in the Sectional 2 finals against Statesville (21-6) at 1 p.m. Saturday at Asheboro High School’s gym. The winner moves on to the Western Regionals in the Hickory area.

Lawing downplayed his sixth double-figure outing.

“I don’t care about scoring. I just want to get rebounds, and I just want to win the game. Scoring doesn’t matter on our team. We just play to win, that’s all,” said Lawing.

Center Bryan McCullough caught fire in the second half and was actually North’s scoring leader with a game-high 18 points. The 6-5 junior also grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds for a double-double.

Point guard Dre Byrd and forward Marcus Reddick added 14 and 10 points, respectively, for the winners.

Lawing didn’t really take that many shots, going 3-for-5 from the floor and 6-for-6 at the foul line, but it was unusual that he tried and made the two 3s.

“I would say he’s made probably about five total all year,” said Everhart. “When he shot the first one (wide open near the corner), it didn’t surprise me. But, I tell you what, whenever he made the steal on the inbounds play and pulled up and shot the 3 falling down, now that surprised me.”

Byrd had just made the second of two free throws with six seconds left in the half to put North up by 12. Lawing stole the inbounds pass, then turned and fired in his 3-pointer just before the buzzer sounded for a 40-25 halftime lead.

“As I came out of the gym, I looked at some of the (North) fans, and I said, ‘Yes, we work on that play every day in practice,’” quipped Everhart.

Lawing, who had scored only 11 points in his previous four games, had a complete performance last night that included six rebounds, four steals, four assists and at least one blocked shot.

“We want Marcus to score points, but we don’t expect him to be a double-figure scorer every night,” said Everhart. “Tonight he had a great offensive game. ... Lawing’s been struggling a little bit offensively the past couple of games. I talked to Marcus before the game about producing more offensively, to really concentrate and really put some points on the board. I think he arose to the challenge tonight.”

“We need to win. We’re trying to get on a run so we can go to the state championship game (in Chapel Hill next month),” he said.

North has a starting lineup of five juniors with one senior, Mario Sturdivant, often playing as much as the starters, but Lawing says being junior-dominated doesn’t matter as the Cavaliers bid for the state title.

“It’s going to be tough, but we’re confident enough. We’ve been playing together for awhile, and I think we’ve got a pretty good chance. If we keep playing the way we are right now, we should go all the way,” Lawing said.

North’s Central Carolina Conference champions bounced back from a 60-59 loss to High Point Central in the finals of the league tourney last Thursday.

“I think that was a wake-up call. We didn’t need to lose that game. Since we lost it, that’s going to fire us up even more to win,” Lawing said.

“These young men have played on the varsity level last year,” said Everhart, “so this shouldn’t be anything knew to them. They made it to Asheboro (sectional finals) last year and lost by one point (to West Stanly). They’re certainly wanting to go back and avenge that loss. We’re real excited about going back to Asheboro, and we’ll just play as hard as we can and hope that we come out on top.”

NOTES: North Rowan went 27-for-59 (45.8 percent) on field goals and 15-for-21 at the foul line, while the Cougars were 20-for-50 from the floor (40 percent) and 11-for-20 on free throws. ... McCullough and Lawing led the Cavaliers to a 35-28 rebounding advantage. ... Southwestern finished 18-9. ... Guard J.R. Bloxson paced the Cougars’ scoring with 15 points and also had seven rebounds, four steals and several assists. ... The Cavaliers scored 75 or more points for the 13th time this season.

SOUTHWESTERN RANDOLPH (53) — Pecotella 9, Leach 5, D. Gaines 4, Bloxson 15, Key 6, Southern 9, M. Gaines, Coley 1, Welch 2, Warren 2, Camp.

NORTH ROWAN (75) — Lawing 14, Reddick 10, McCullough 18, Phillips 8, Byrd 14, Sturdivant 5, J. Miller 2, Davis 2, Hosch, A. Miller 2, Witherspoon.

SW Randolph 9 16 13 15 — 53