LAURINBURG — Last week didn’t end in an ideal fashion for the Scotland High boys basketball team. The Scots fell to Sandhills Athletic Conference leader Pinecrest, 56-51, after coming up short on some crucial scoring opportunities late in the game.
On paper, the loss to Pinecrest isn’t the worst thing that could happen. The Patriots are 10-2 in conference play, and they are ranked ninth in the NCHSAA 4A adjusted MaxPreps rankings, which are used to determine playoff seeding. They are in a good position to make a playoff run after contending for the conference title.
But Scotland can hardly afford to lose at this point in the season. The Fighting Scots’ playoff outlook has improved slightly, but they still have some work to do in order to grab a postseason spot. The Scots are in fifth place in the SAC with a 7-5 league record, just a couple games behind third-place Richmond.
The most recent playoff projections published by WRAL’s HighSchoolOT.com list Scotland as one of the last five teams to make the field. In the most recent adjusted MaxPreps rankings, the Scots were in 49th place. Those rankings were released Feb. 3; they will be updated on Feb. 17.
The Scots have two games left on their regular-season schedule. They’ll celebrate senior night on Tuesday against Lumberton, and they’ll close out their schedule with a rivalry game at Richmond on Friday night. Lumberton is No. 8 in the 4A MaxPreps rankings, and Richmond is No. 22.
How playoff seeding works
The 4A state playoffs bracket will include 48 teams.
Conferences with five to eight teams will send two automatic qualifiers to the playoffs. The SAC has eight teams; if the season ended today, Pinecrest and Lumberton would receive automatic bids.
The conference tournament champion will also receive a playoff bid. That team will receive an at-large bid, unless it already received an automatic bid based on its position in the standings.
After that process is complete, any remaining spots are filled on an at-large basis.
The next-highest finishing teams from each conference are added to a list and compared based on their MaxPreps rankings. Whomever has the best MaxPreps ranking on that list is given an at-large bid.
The next highest-finishing school in that team’s conference will then become eligible for an at-large bid, and the list will reset.
Because teams in each conference are given bids based on their position in their league’s standings, higher-ranked teams in each conference must get bids before lower-ranked teams. For example, the fourth-place finisher in the SAC will not be able to get an at-large bid until the third-place finisher does.
Unlike football, the NCHSAA playoff brackets are not subdivided; you won’t see 4A and 4AA, only 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A.
