In the moments after his team’s regular season finale against the visiting Leonardtown Raiders, Northern head boys basketball coach Torrence Oxendine received a visitor in the hallway outside his team’s locker room.
Renard Johnson, head coach of the Potomac Wolverines, dropped by to chat with Oxendine, who Johnson succeeded at the helm of the Prince George’s County program eight years ago. Potomac had just wrapped up a wildly successful 20-2 regular season, with both of its losses coming against county rival Oxon Hill by a combined nine points.
Northern is not on the level of Potomac at present, but did finish the regular season playing its basketball. The Patriots took a season-high three-game win streak into their finale against Leonardtown and nearly pulled off an upset in a 64-62 loss to the Raiders. The team’s reward for their season progression is a No. 7 seed in the Class 3A South Region I playoff field, where they will meet Johnson and his second-seeded Wolverines at 6 tonight at Potomac.
“I’m extremely proud of the guys from Nov. 15 all the way to now,” Oxendine said of his squad, which goes into the playoffs with a 7-15 record. “We’ve grown a lot. I have a lot of young guys who have grown a lot and our seniors have matured. We only had a few, but the young guys have really learned how to win games and close out games. We’ll make sure we can expound on that.
“Going into Potomac next Friday is going to be a tall task. They have an excellent coach in coach Renard Johnson. They have Corey [Dyches], who is a University of Maryland [football] commit, and they just have a lot of guys who play hard and hit shots. We look forward to the challenge on hopefully we can give everybody a great game.”
The task for Northern is tall, but that can be said of literally any team in what is an absolutely loaded region.
St. Charles (22-1 overall) is the top seed in 3A South Region I and hosts eighth-seeded Chopticon (3-19) at 6 tonight, but the top five of the eight seeds all won at least 16 games and sixth-seeded North Point (12-10) is a perennial power that struggled to find consistency this season but has several quality wins on its résumé.
Great Mills (18-4), the third seed, will host North Point in a region quarterfinal game at 7 tonight. Seeded fourth, Oxon Hill (20-3 after defeating Eleanor Roosevelt in the Prince George’s County championship game Wednesday night), will host fifth-seeded Huntingtown (16-7), the SMAC Chesapeake Division champion which played for the SMAC championship against St. Charles on Wednesday night, at 7 tonight.
Whoever wins the region will have to really earn it, with just a spot in the state quarterfinals as a reward for maneuvering through the minefield.
“People have been calling our section the section of death,” Huntingtown head coach Tobias Jenifer said in the moments following his team’s 64-53 loss to St. Charles in the SMAC final. “We get Oxon Hill on Friday. ... We have to regroup. I probably won’t go to sleep tonight until 2 o’clock. Hopefully I’ll get that film and watch that and dissect that and get ready for Friday. No days off.”
A region quarterfinal win would get St. Charles, the SMAC champion, either a rematch with SMAC runner-up Huntingtown or a visit from the Prince George’s County champion Clippers. Either way, there is no easy road.
“It’s a very intense region,” St. Charles head coach Brett Campbell said. “I feel bad for Huntingtown. They go 15-5 [in games that count towards regional seeding] and have to go to Oxon Hill. If we get through Chopticon, we play the winner of that. It’s going to be a tough situation, but we’ve prepared ourselves the best that we can. We’ll see what happens.”
In Region I of the 2A South, Thomas Stone (17-5) earned the top seed and a quarterfinal round bye. The Cougars will host the winner of a quarterfinal round matchup between fourth-seeded Lackey (11-11) and fifth-seeded La Plata (5-17) in the region semifinals on Tuesday. Lackey hosts the Warriors at 6:30 tonight.
On the other side of the bracket, Westlake (13-9) is the No. 3 seed and received a quarterfinal round bye. The Wolverines will travel to Anne Arundel County to battle second-seeded Southern (16-6) in the region semifinals at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
In Region II of the 2A South, third-seeded Calvert (6-16) will host county rival Patuxent (2-20) at 6:30 tonight, with the winner advancing to play at Gwynn Park in the region’s semifinals on Tuesday. The top seed in the region is Frederick Douglass (15-5), which is also the only team in the bracket to bring a winning record into the postseason.
McDonough (3-19) is the sixth in the 1A South Region Region II draw, and will travel to Prince George’s County to square off against third-seeded Friendly (9-11) in the first round.
On the heels of one of the most successful seasons in program history, Leonardtown (17-5) is the No. 2 seed in Region II of the 4A East, has a quarterfinal round bye and will host third-seeded Broadneck (15-7) in the region semifinals. The Raiders will welcome their Anne Arundel County adversary at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“We worked really hard to get that set up, so we’re really excited,” Leonardtown head coach Jeb Barber said. “I really hope that our fans really show up and come out and support us that night.”
Twitter: @cfhphilly
