Heath Neal's Lady Blackhawk basketball squad will be in the finals of the 4A-1 District Tournament though the site and opponent depend on events that would have transpired after publishing deadlines earlier this week.
Monday evening, Berryville was to play Gravette on the road with the winner of that contest set to travel to Pea Ridge Tuesday night in the district semi-finals. At the same time as the Berryville/Gravette game, Farmington was to host Shiloh in the other quarterfinal bout with the winner traveling to Harrison Tuesday night.
If the Hawks won Tuesday, and Harrison lost in their semifinal match, Pea Ridge would be playing at home against either Farmington or Shiloh for the title Thursday. If Harrison won their game, then the Blackhawks would be going over to the Goblins' home court Thursday.
Now if the Hawks lost Tuesday, they would be the host of the third place playoff game if the opponent is Farmington or Shiloh. If Harrison lost their semifinal match along with the Hawks, then the Goblins would host the third place game.
All four semifinalist teams will play in the North Regional next week in Ozark. The other half of the region, the 4A-4, decided to cancel their district tournament altogether and go with league records, thus giving Morrilton the No. 1 seed from the 4A-4 and Pottsville the No. 2 seed. It seems there was to be a makeup regular season game between Ozark (15-7) and Dardanelle (4-16) with the results determining the final two seeds.
If Ozark won that game, they get the No. 3 seed in their own tournament with Clarksville getting the fourth seed. If Dardanelle sprung the upset, Ozark would be out of their own tournament, Clarksville will be No. 3 instead with Dardanelle getting the fourth seed.
The winner of the 4A-1 plays the No. 4 seed of the 4A-4. The 4A-2 runner-up plays the third seed of the 4A-4. Morrilton will play the fourth place team from the 4A-1 with Pottsville playing the third place 4A-1 team.
The week following the Regionals will see the State Tournament to be held in Morrilton except for the championship game which is always held in Hot Springs.
Besides the North Region, there are two other regionals in action next week. The East Regional and the South Regional. The East consists of Districts 4A-3 and 4A-5 while the South is composed of the 4A-7 and the 4A-8.
The Arkansas Activities Association gave all districts until Feb. 28 to produce their four qualifiers for the regional. They may choose to go with the top four in their district standings (the 4A-8 always does this) and it is unclear to me the intentions of the other four districts as information on the internet is extremely sparse.
The top four conference finishers in the 4A-3 are: No. 1 Brookland (15-4), No. 2 Valley View (16-5), No. 3 Batesville Southside (14-7), and No. 4 Pocahontas (13-7). In the 4A-5, the No. 1 is Pulaski (17-3), No. 2 eStem (14-7), No. 3 Wynne (10-10) and No. 4 Stuttgart (8-9).
In the South, the 4A-7 is led by No. 1 Nashville (22-4), No. 2 Mena (18-2), No. 3 Fountain Lake (14-10), and No. 4 Bauxite (9-16). The other half of the South is the 4A-8 led by No. 1 and defending state champion Star City (23-3), No. 2 Watson Chapel (11-11), No. 3 Magnolia (10-7) and Crossett (16-8).
Mena appears to be a victim of the covid-19 pandemic. They were a half game behind No. 1 Nashville with only a game left with 0-17 Malvern left on the schedule. They had earlier beaten Nashville and owned the tiebreaker if only they could beat winless Malvern, they would claim a league title. However, Malvern refused to play the game, calling their season. Because of the rules in effect at present, there can be no forfeit, so Mena is saddled with second place, losing a conference title.
In the Associated Press latest high school basketball rankings, Harrison is still the top ranked girls team in the 4A state. No. 2 is Star City, No. 3 is Brookland, No. 4 is Pea Ridge, No. 5 is Mena, with No. 6 Nashville.