After having concluded a tough last stretch of the regular season in which it played three games a week over the last three weeks, the Halifax County High School varsity boys basketball team faces a new challenge Monday night.

The third-seeded Comets (14-7 overall) will face sixth-seeded Patrick Henry High School-Ashland Monday night at 7 p.m. at Halifax County High School in a first-round game of the 5A North Region Conference 16 Tournament.

Monday nights bottom line is simple win or go home.

Its a brand new season, remarked Comets Head Coach Sterling Williams.

Everybody is 0-0. It doesnt matter what you did in the games before. You can have played your worst game, and hopefully we did.

Hopefully, Williams continued, we will start playing our best games and start playing some good basketball, moving the ball around, sharing the ball and picking our intensity back up on the defensive end and enjoying playing the game we had been playing earlier in the season.

The Comets, who have won the 5A North Region Conference 16 Tournament two of the last three years, earning conference titles in 2014 and 2015 and finishing as the runner-up last season, know that while Patrick Henry-Ashlands record is not as good as theirs ,it doesnt mean that PH is a bad team.

They (Patrick Henry-Ashland) dont have a record that looks the best, but theyre playing in a tough district with teams like Varina and Henrico, and they played them pretty close, Williams noted.

It doesnt matter who you play. We cant worry about what PH does. Weve got to worry about taking care of the things we need to take care of. Weve got to take care of the Comets.

Weve got to take care of the basketball, play our type of game, play our type of defense, get in the gaps on the help side, just take care of the things we know we can take care of.

The Comets enter the tournament having lost two of their last three games including Thursday nights regular-season finale against Martinsville High School. Williams says despite that his team will be ready to play Monday night.

I dont think it will be hard to get the guys up for Monday, he remarked.

We look for challenges. I think the guys will be ready to play.

The Comets had a tough stretch of games to end the season, playing three games a week over the last three weeks.

Its been kind of rocky right here at the end playing three games a week for three weeks straight, Williams said following Thursday nights loss to Martinsville High School.

Thats not what were used to. I think our conditioning has been a little bit of a factor because we have been playing so many games and guys have been logging a lot of minutes.

But, we cant worry about that now, he added.

We werent the only team that faced that. Everybody had to play because of snow days. Were not going to make any excuses.

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