Photo courtesy of Joanna McMahan

 

As the 2022-2023 NCHSAA 1A Basketball regular season comes to an end, we decided to take our best shot at predicting what the first-round playoff matchups would look like if the season ended today. Obviously, these will change due to teams having more games to play and the human error aspect of things, but this should be a good generalization of what things will look like.

Seeding

• Conference champions will be seeded before any other qualifying teams by RPI rating
• All other teams will be seeded after the conference champions by the RPI rating of the school, regardless of conference finish
• Each region (East/West) will be seeded independently of one another, utilizing the RPI rating of the school

RPI Rankings 

CLASS 1A WEST
	TEAM	RECORD
1	Mountain Heritage	20-1-0
2	South Stokes	18-4-0
3	Thomasville	18-4-0
4	Eastern Randolph	20-2-0
5	North Stokes	20-3-0
6	Bishop McGuinness	18-5-0
7	Robbinsville	18-5-0
8	Bessemer City	14-7-0
9	Corvian Community	13-6-0
10	Murphy	14-8-0
11	Starmount	12-9-0
12	Carolina International	13-14-0
13	Avery County	14-8-0
14	Mount Airy	7-12-0
15	Leadership Academy	13-7-0
16	Cornerstone Charter	14-4-0
17	Queen’s Grant	13-8-0
18	Andrews	13-10-0
19	Hayesville	13-9-0
20	Swain County	11-11-0
21	Winston-Salem Prep	11-8-0
22	Cherokee	11-11-0
23	Cherryville	11-11-0
24	Piedmont Community Charter	14-8-0
25	Uwharrie Charter	6-16-0
26	Mountain Island Charter	8-10-0
27	Christ the King	10-10-0
28	Albemarle	11-10-0
29	Alleghany	11-10-0
30	Draughn	11-11-0
31	North Rowan	11-11-0
32	Bradford Prep	11-12-0
33	Hiwassee Dam	10-12-0

 

As you can see, Hiwassee Dam looks like they are below the 32 team cutoff but thanks to the fact they are currently the Little SMC leaders, they will get one of the final top 10 seeds that go to conference champions. Albemarle is in the same boat as they will jump up the ladder thanks to being the top 1A team in their 1A/2A split conference, but North Stokes will suffer due to the conference champion priority seeding as South Stokes is the current leader in their conference.

 

Projected First Round Matchups (as of 2-7-23 / 1:30 pm)

(1) Mountain Heritage vs (32) Bradford Prep

(2) South Stokes vs (31) Draughn

(3) Thomasville vs (30) Alleghany

(4) Eastern Randolph vs (29) Christ The King

(5) Bishop McGuinness vs (28) Mtn Island Charter

(6) Robbinsville vs (27) Uwharrie Charter

(7) Bessemer City vs (26) Piedmont Community Charter

(8) Corvian Community vs (25) Cherryville

(9) Albemarle vs (24) Cherokee

(10) Hiwassee Dam vs (23) WS Prep

(11) North Stokes vs (22) Swain County

(12) Murphy vs (21) Hayesville

(13) Starmount vs (20) Andrews

(14) Carolina International vs (19) Queens Grant

(15) Leadership Academy vs (18) Mount Airy

(16) Cornerstone Charter vs (17) Avery County

 

These matchups will change as we get final results for the regular season and the Conference tournament, we will keep this post as current as possible with updates and amendments.