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| PHOTO BY JOHNNY JOHNSON - THE NEWS & OBSERVER |
Conference races are heating up throughout the state and before we know it that first week of the playoffs will be upon us. I know that personally one thing I'm definitely missing is the exceptional work that Drew Pasteur put forth each fall with regards to his Fantastic 50 predictions that ultimately culminated in the incredible work that projected out all of the brackets. It was amazing work and in case you happen to be reading Drew - thanks for all that you did to support high school athletics in North Carolina over the years and I hope you and the family are doing well up North!
I won't try to match what Drew did, but I did take a few moments and go through and get a bit of information about all of the classification AAAA teams in the state and at least have an idea of where teams stand as we head into the final three weeks of the regular season. References, citations, footnotes - whatever your modus operandi is with regards to giving credit - are a good thing, so I wanted to give a shout out to the Asheville Reynolds contingent that have for so many years done an awesome job with their website [www.gobiggreen.net]. Almost all of the information that I used to put together some of the information I'm going to present came from their site. If you haven't checked out this site and you follow high school ball in the state, then you are definitely missing out. For those that value a bit of perspective when you are talking around the water cooler (as opposed to the hype machines that base the hype on zero substance) you have to check out the site, you won't be disappointed.
Playoffs Out of Reach?
Well, you knew it was coming sooner or later and with last week we had four additional teams inch closer to the edge and get very close to joining Garinger High School and Southwest Guilford as teams that as best as I can determine will not be able to make the playoffs this year, unless some incredible things happen over the final three weeks. Southwest Guilford will be ineligible for postseason play because of players being ejected earlier this season. Garinger was eliminated a week prior as they currently have zero reportable wins with only two games remaining on their schedule. Sanderson, Smithfield Selma, Ben L. Smith and East Mecklenburg look to be at best half-way out of consideration at this point. All have zero reportable wins and only three games remaining meaning that winning all of them will not get them to the four win plateau for at-large consideration. It also does not appear that winning their three remaining games would get them into the top three of their conferences for an automatic bid unless there are numerous upsets that create a log-jam in the three win region. That said, if any of those four can pull off a three game winning streak to close the season and if crazy things happen ahead of them - who knows, it just might be their lucky day!
