The Scotland High boys basketball team probably wants to put what happened on Valentine’s Day behind them.
And they’ll need to. Quickly.
After a 67-62 loss at Richmond in their regular-season finale on Friday night, the Fighting Scots will be back in action on Tuesday night in the first round of the Sandhills Athletic Conference tournament. The fourth-seeded Scots will host fifth-seeded Seventy-First at 6 p.m. The winner of that game will play in the semifinals Thursday against the winner of top-seeded Pinecrest and eighth-seeded Jack Britt.
Pinecrest and Lumberton grabbed the SAC’s two automatic playoff bids by taking the top spots in the regular-season conference standings. If a different team wins the conference tournament, the SAC will have three schools with automatic bids in the boys playoffs.
The Scots could make their lives a little easier by winning the tournament and locking in a postseason spot. It’s not shaping up to be an easy task, especially considering how well the teams at the top of the conference are playing. But Scotland can stand up to the competition; the Scots beat Richmond and Lumberton once in the regular season. Pinecrest routed the Scots 66-27 in Laurinburg, but the Patriots narrowly escaped with a 56-51 win when the teams met in Southern Pines.
According to the most recent 4A playoff projections published by WRAL’s highschoolot.com, Scotland could still grab an at-large bid if winning the tournament doesn’t work out. Ranked 45th in the newest adjusted MaxPreps rankings, the Scots are projected to be one of the last five teams to make the field.
Conference tournament games will affect the updated MaxPreps rankings that will be published and used for playoff seeding this weekend. So the Scots will need to take advantage of their opportunity to grab more wins and improve their resume for the postseason; a first-round exit in the conference tournament would be a tough pill to swallow.
The Falcons of Seventy-First will provide a stiff test for the Scots. The teams split their two regular-season meetings; Seventy-First won 56-45 in Laurinburg, and Scotland won 55-51 in Fayetteville.
The Scots are used to being undersized against their opponents. Seventy-First has a slight height advantage in this matchup —the Falcons’ roster lists five players at 6-foot-3 or taller, including two players who stand at 6 feet 7 inches tall. Scotland’s tallest player, center Trey Graham, is 6 feet 5 inches tall.
Because of that height difference, the Scots will need to be accurate from long range. They have more than players who can attack from 3-point range; it’s just a matter of avoiding the frustrating cold streaks that have hampered the Scots throughout the season.
Morale has a lot to do with hot and cold streaks, so the Scots will need to use Friday’s loss as motivation to win this week. Regular-season records don’t mean anything now; it’s all about surviving and advancing to the next round.
If their heads are in the right place, there’s no reason why the Scots can’t make some noise in the postseason.
