To call Kinston’s boys basketball team lucky would be inaccurate. But with all the 7s that keep popping up, perhaps it has become the Vikings’ lucky number.
The NCHSAA on Saturday released the official schedule for this week’s regional basketball tournaments and both Kinston’s boys and girls will play their regional semifinal games at 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, respectively, at the Crown Arena in Fayetteville.
Kinston’s boys, winners of seven consecutive conference regular season and tournament titles and in the Eastern Regionals for the seventh straight year, will face seventh-seeded Bunn on the seventh day of the month.
“That’s awesome,” Vikings coach Perry Tyndall told The Free Press in a text message Saturday after being told of all the 7s his team has encountered.
“And crazy.”
The top-seeded Vikings (25-2), on a win streak of 16 games that dates back to Jan. 4, will face a team in Bunn (23-6) that knocked off Farmville Central, 55-45, Friday to advance and has won 10 in a row. The winner games either No. 1 Jacksonville Northside (25-3) or No. 3 Fairmont (24-5) in the 2A Eastern Regional championship at 4 p.m. on Saturday at the Crown Arena — the same venue Kinston played in last season.
Kinston’s third-seeded girls (24-4) are the highest seed left in the 2A Eastern Regional and will face No. 4 Bunn (23-6) for the second time this season. The Vikings participated in the Wildcats’ post-Christmas tournament and were defeated by the host school 55-49 on Dec. 27.
Two of the three teams that defeated Kinston in the Bunn Christmas Classic are in the regionals, including 3A Chapel Hill.
Kinston has won 15 straight while Bunn is on a 20-game win streak. The winner will face either No. 5 Siler City Jordan-Matthews (26-4) or No. 11 Graham (19-10) in the regional championship at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
The 2A state championships will be held on March 16 at UNC’s Dean E. Smith Center.
Ryan Herman can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Ryan.Herman@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter: @KFPSports.