GREENFIELD-TRINITY III?
Two meetings decided by five points have gone the way of the Greenfield School varsity boys basketball team in showdowns with Fayetteville Trinity Christian this season.
The Knights won the first meeting, 66-64 in Fayetteville on Jan. 2 in a contest that gave head coach Rob Salter his 500th victory in 19 seasons.
Saturday at Greenfield, the Knights held on at the buzzer as a 3-pointer that would have forced overtime bounced harmlessly off the rim.
Is a third meeting between the teams in the cards for deep in the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association 1-A playoffs?
“I’m pretty sure we will,” junior Jacari Outlaw, coming off a 22-point showing, said. “It’s going to be a tough game. It’s going to be a good game to watch.”
While not using a wrist injury to senior wing Greg Gantt as a reason — Trinity Christian head coach Heath Vandevender cautioned not to book a semifinal or a rematch of last year’s NCISAA 1-A championship just yet, won 70-62 by the Crusaders. Gantt is bound for Providence College in the Big East Conference.
“We’ve got a lot to do and a lot of goals to achieve between now and then,” Vandevender said. “If that happens, it happens. We’ll both address that if we both get to that point.”
In the postseason, Greenfield (27-4) has to go back to 2010 for the last time it beat Trinity Christian in the playoffs — a 70-39 Knights blitzing. Since then, Trinity (19-8) has won five in a row over Greenfield in postseason play, including championships in 2014 and 2017.
Greenfield will get a significant personnel boost heading into the 1-A/2-A Coastal Plains Independent Conference tournament this week, as junior point guard Dji Bailey returns from focusing on academics for a span of several games.
Two meetings decided by five points have gone the way of the Greenfield School varsity boys basketball team in showdowns with Fayetteville Trinity Christian this season.
The Knights won the first meeting, 66-64 in Fayetteville on Jan. 2 in a contest that gave head coach Rob Salter his 500th victory in 19 seasons.
Saturday at Greenfield, the Knights held on at the buzzer as a 3-pointer that would have forced overtime bounced harmlessly off the rim.
Is a third meeting between the teams in the cards for deep in the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association 1-A playoffs?
“I’m pretty sure we will,” junior Jacari Outlaw, coming off a 22-point showing, said. “It’s going to be a tough game. It’s going to be a good game to watch.”
While not using a wrist injury to senior wing Greg Gantt as a reason — Trinity Christian head coach Heath Vandevender cautioned not to book a semifinal or a rematch of last year’s NCISAA 1-A championship just yet, won 70-62 by the Crusaders. Gantt is bound for Providence College in the Big East Conference.
“We’ve got a lot to do and a lot of goals to achieve between now and then,” Vandevender said. “If that happens, it happens. We’ll both address that if we both get to that point.”
In the postseason, Greenfield (27-4) has to go back to 2010 for the last time it beat Trinity Christian in the playoffs — a 70-39 Knights blitzing. Since then, Trinity (19-8) has won five in a row over Greenfield in postseason play, including championships in 2014 and 2017.
Greenfield will get a significant personnel boost heading into the 1-A/2-A Coastal Plains Independent Conference tournament this week, as junior point guard Dji Bailey returns from focusing on academics for a span of several games.
