Sportsmanship and a couple of inspirational team moments were the highlights for the Suffolk Lady Storm on Saturday at Creekside Recreation Center.

Of the Portsmouth 2 squad that his team faced, Suffolk coach Tom Lewis said, “The team was a bit undermanned,” helping his Lady Storm put together a 28-4 halftime lead and a 44-8 win.

Lewis did not relish the lopsided score and made adjustments after his team had the game in hand, including canceling its full-court press after gaining a 20-point lead, per Virginia Cities Fall Basketball League rules.

“I just had our girls fall back into a zone so that (Portsmouth) could get the ball up court without any pressure,” Lewis said.

He said Portsmouth had a bigger team earlier in the season, but at least on Saturday, it had almost no bench to support its starting five.

The Lady Storm were led in scoring by seventh-grader Lanae Stokes with 13 points, while eighth-grader Neecole Brown and seventh-grader Makaylen Davis had eight points apiece.

But the signature moments of the day for Lewis surrounded a couple of his team’s less-heralded players this year.

“To me, the highlight of the whole game was my fourth-grader scored a basket, and the crowd went wild, and her teammates were really happy for her,” he said.

While he had previously thought Niyah Gaston was in fifth grade, he later discovered she is in fourth. Her youth did not stop her from getting her first two points of the season.

“It was late in the game, and she managed to get open and hit a shot,” he said.

The other high point of Saturday to Lewis involved seventh-grader Ashlee Robertson, a second-year Lady Storm player who played in one game this season but has since been sidelined after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament.

Nevertheless, she has still come to games faithfully and even dressed out, and the Lady Storm showed support for her on Saturday.

“They surprised her at the end of the game with a ‘get well’ card and a gift,” Lewis said. “You could just tell it touched Ashlee, because she truly wasn’t expecting it.”

Suffolk (5-1) has one game remaining before the end-of-season tournament and a chance to repeat as league champions. It will play Norfolk (4-2) at 10 a.m. on Saturday at Creekside Recreation Center. Norfolk lost this past Saturday to Virginia Beach (5-0), the only team to hand Suffolk a loss in 2014.

“If we lose to Norfolk, we’d be tied, but if we win, we’ll have second all by ourselves,” Lewis said, referring to tournament seeding.