CARY — After a morale-boosting win over Cary Christian in the first round of the Johnson-Lambe Holiday Invitational, members of the Cary Academy girls’ basketball team were feeling more relieved than confident.

It was the first time in three chances this year that the Lady Chargers had gotten the upper hand on their rivals, but the team still had doubts as to how well it could compete with their next two opponents, both 4-A public schools.

But after an overtime loss to Southern Durham was followed by a resounding 49-32 Wednesday win over Fuquay-Varina to finish third place in the J-L Invitational, Kim Shaw’s team might finally be believing in itself.

“It was a morale-booster for them to know, ‘Hey, we’re better than we think we are.’ Right now they’re a young team and they don’t think we’re all that good. So when you win against good competition it’s ‘Oh my god did we just win?’” Shaw said.

“I told them, ‘You guys are not giving yourselves enough credit.’ As far as giving themselves credit and seeing how well they played as a team, I think [the tournament] did a lot for them.”

The opening-round win over the Knights was the first defeat handed to Cary Christian all year.

“The first time we played them we lost by two and we knew we could do it,” junior guard Kelsey Lee said.

Lee’s 46 points in three days led the Lady Chargers, and she was named first-team all tournament. After handling most of the point guard duties last year, Shaw has let other players bring the ball up the court, allowing Lee to get more scoring opportunities.

“She’s our veteran point guard, and I’m making sure she steps up this year,” Shaw said. “[Moving her from point guard] frees her up to play ball. She stopped being a robot and now she’s playing basketball ... She’s coming into her own and I’m really proud of her.”

Lee had 18 points against Fuquay in the third-place game. When her team needed a spark, it seemed as though Lee was always there to supply it, whether it was a quick steal and a lay-in or a long 3-pointer.

Sophomore forward Haleigh McFarland added 13 in the win over the Bengals.

“Overall, we played really great as a team,” Shaw said. “We worked a lot on our offense this time around and I think we did well.”

It would’ve been easy for a let-down after losing a heartbreaker to Southern Durham, or acceptable to lose momentum after the emotional high that came with defeating Cary Christian, but both times the Lady Chargers came out focused for the next game.

“I make sure that we always keep our poise. That’s something that I really preach to the team whether we’re up or whether we’re down,” Shaw said.

“They held it together and remained poised, making sure that we ran our transition, ran our offense and played really hard defense.”

Finishing third in the J-L Invitational had Lee and her teammates realizing that this team is good, capable of playing anybody left on their schedule.

“We were talking about how we’ve played against the top teams,” Lee said. “We can beat anybody.”

Western Harnett won the girls’ bracket with an 85-58 palindrome of Southern Durham, and Western’s star guard Ariel Bursey was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

Cary Christian finished sixth in the tournament after losing 41-40 to Durham Academy and Panther Creek took seventh after taking down Charlotte Latin 55-42.