Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wolverines want to keep recent road success going
CENTERTON — The 6A-West Conference’s schedule makers didn’t do Bentonville West any favors during the second half of league play and gave the Wolverines five straight road games.
The Wolverines (13-12, 7-6), however, have made the most of the situation. West has already won three of those road games and will try to make it four in a row when the Wolverines travel to Fort Smith Northside (10-16, 4-8) tonight.
“When we added Northside to our league, we knew it was going to make some scheduling headaches,” West Coach Greg White said. “And nobody was going to be happy with what they went through last year and what we’re going through this year.
“We kind of take this as a challenge, and I think our kids are responding very well to it. Home games are important, and road games are extremely tough. The fact that we have won three straight road games right now, we feel confident with how we are playing and how the kids are handling the challenge.”
The Wolverines’ recent road success — wins over Rogers (46-39), Bentonville (37-34) and Fort Smith Southside (59-39) — has positioned West into a solid fourth place in the conference standings with three games remaining. The Wolverines continue their road swing with tonight’s game against Northside and Friday at Springdale before they close out the regular season next week at home against Rogers Heritage.
West still has the opportunity to move past Springdale into third place before the season ends, but it will need to win out and hope the Bulldogs suffer at least one more loss. But that doesn’t happen unless the Wolverines take care of business against a Northside team that needs to win to keep its state tournament hopes alive as the Grizzlies are tied with Rogers Heritage (12-14, 4-8) for the sixth and final seed at the moment.
“For us to be in contention of reaching our max potential this season, we knew we had to win at Rogers and at Southside,” White said. “Bentonville was sort of a tossup with it being a big rivalry game, and we got all three of them.
“These were five games on the schedule that, they weren’t the first- and second-place teams, but they were games you needed to win in order to stay where you’re at and not fall out of the playoff hunt. So it’s been more pressure for us because these games felt like mustwin games each time out.”
Other 6A-West games scheduled for tonight include Fayetteville at Bentonville, which is playing its fourth straight home game; Springdale at Rogers and Rogers Heritage at Springdale Har-Ber. Friday’s games include Northside at Fayetteville, West at Springdale, Bentonville at Rogers and Har-Ber at Southside.
While Class 6A and 5A teams are still involved in regular-season play for the next two weeks, most teams in Classes 1A through 4A have begun postseason play this week with conference tournaments. Four conference tournaments involving area teams — the 3A-1 at Valley Springs, the 4A-4 at Clarksville, the 3A-4 at Hackett and the 2A-4 at Magazine — had first-round games scheduled for Monday and will continue tonight.
Three conference tournaments — the 1A-1 East at Jasper, the 1A-1 West at Decatur and the 2A-1 at Cotter — were postponed Monday because of inclement weather and will begin tonight. The 4A-1 Conference Tournament at Gravette, meanwhile, begins tonight as scheduled with four games.