The Swish: Crowning conference basketball champions

Everyone has a chance to make the N.C. High School Athletic Association boys and girls basketball playoffs.

That’s the beauty of this week.

Winning the conference title is an automatic playoff bid. Tournament champions get seeded higher than wild-card teams, but below regular season champions. Regular season champs see no change to their seed if they win the conference championship.

Word of God’s ‘other’ varsity team: Word of God’s basketball history draws in some of its players, but playing time is hard to come by for many of its students.

So this year the Holy Rams added an extra team.

There’s now a varsity, varsity academy and junior varsity.

The varsity academy plays other varsity teams and owns a win over 1A power Rocky Mount Prep.

“For every kid who doesn’t get the opportunity to play here, he’s probably going somewhere else,” Word of God coach Brian Clifton said. “We keep them in school, we keep them in games, they’re feel good because they are representing our school just like the varsity team. It just works for everybody.”

Ravenscroft’s scorers: Three Ravesncroft girls basketball players topped the 1,000-point mark this season and were honored last week. Seniors Erin Hughes and Lynn Johnson reached the mark last week while junior Madison Taylor did the same earlier this season.

New NCISAA format: The N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association basketball playoff format has changed from previous seasons. This year, it will take two weeks to complete four rounds instead of one and there are 16 teams instead of 12.

Games are at the higher seed for the first round (Tuesday), second (Thursday) and third (Saturday) before shifting to neutral sites for the semifinals on Feb. 24 and finals on Feb. 25. The top eight seeds get first-round byes and the top four get second-round byes as well.

Spragley reaches milestone: Northern Nash senior point guard Darius Spragley scored his 1,000th point last month and was honored last week.

CONFERENCE CHAMPS

These are the No. 1 seeds entering the conference tournaments. Only regular-season and touurnament champions get automatic playoff bids.

Cap-8 4A: Millbrook girls (22-2, 14-0) and Heritage boys (24-0, 14-0). Friday’s finals are at Broughton.

Greater Neuse 4A: Southeast Raleigh girls (24-0, 14-0) and Garner boys (22-2, 14-0). Thursday’s finals are at Campbell University.

PAC-6 4A: Hillside girls (21-3, 12-0) and East Chapel Hill boys (19-5, 11-1). Friday’s finals are at East Chapel Hill.

Southwest Wake 4A: Green Hope girls (21-3, 14-2) and Cary boys (16-7, 13-3). Friday’s finals are at Apex Friendship.

Eastern Carolina 3A/4A: The South Central (13-8, 11-1) and J.H. Rose girls (12-11, 11-1) are co-champions and will use the conference tournament to break the tie for the automatic No. 1 seed. The South Central boys (21-1, 12-0) won outright.

Big 8 3A: The Orange girls (22-1, 11-1) and boys (19-5, 11-1). Friday’s finals will be at Orange.

Big East 3A: Rocky Mount’s girls (18-2, 10-0) and Northern Nash boys (22-2, 10-0).

Cape Fear Valley 3A: The Union Pines girls (22-2, 11-1) and Southern Lee boys (15-7, 10-2).

Two Rivers 3A: The Triton girls (14-10, 9-1) and boys (15-9, 10-0). Friday’s finals will be at Triton.

Eastern Plains 2A: The SouthWest Edgecombe girls (16-4, 8-2) and Beddingfield boys (15-8, 8-2).

Northern Carolina 2A: The Roanoke Rapids girls (16-6, 13-1) and South Granville boys (20-4, 13-1). Friday’s finals will be at South Granville.

Carolina 1A: The Princeton girls (18-4, 13-1) won outright, while the Spring Creek boys (17-6, 12-2) shared the title with James Kenan (15-4, 12-2). The conference tournament will decide which takes the automatic bid into the playoffs.

North Central Athletic 1A: The NCAC started its conference tournament over the weekend with 7-vs-10 and 8-vs-9 games.

The Roxboro Community girls (23-3, 18-0) and Kestrel Heights boys (24-0, 18-0) enter as top seeds. Friday’s finals will be at River Mill Academy.

Tar-Roanoke 1A: The Weldon girls (14-2, 12-0) and Southeast Halifax boys (16-5, 10-2).

Other: The Overhills boys (18-4, 10-2) won their first title in program history, claiming the Mid-South 4A.

Rocky Mount Prep’s boys (19-4, 9-1) won the Two Rivers 1A.

This story was originally published February 11, 2017 at 6:13 PM with the headline "The Swish: Crowning conference basketball champions."