Springdale High and Van Buren went into tournaments over the holiday break with undefeated records. Neither won their respective tournaments, but they hope that momentum carries over as 7A/6A-West play begins this week.

Springdale was 5-0 entering play in the Coke Classic at Arkansas-Fort Smith right after Christmas and beat Bryant 64-55 and Fort Smith Northside 64-50 before running into North Little Rock in the finals.

The Charging Wildcats, ranked No. 2 in the Fearless Friday.com poll this week, hit seven 3-pointers and broke away late to beat the Bulldogs 69-57. Springdale trailed just 44-42 after three quarters.

Last week, Springdale lost to Northside 49-48 in a rematch and to Springfield (Mo.) Kickapoo 57-55 in Fayetteville’s Bulldog Classic after beating Liberty, Mo., in the opener.

“The biggest thing for us right now is team freethrow percentage,” Springdale coach Brad Stamps said. “We’re shooting less than 50 percent as a team in the last four games. We’re also playing good teams, so it’s a combination of those two things. We didn’t play bad against North Little Rock, and had a chance. Then in the Fayetteville tournament against Northside, we feel like if we had made some free throws we would have won that one and the same thing against Kickapoo.”

Missed free throws were costly against Northside and Kickapoo, two losses by a combined three points.

“We didn’t play our best basketball in either one, but we still had a chance to win the games,” Stamps said. “We missed 11 free throws in the Northside game, and 12 against Kickapoo, and most of those were front ends.”

Springdale (8-3) was scheduled to host Bentonville tonight to open conference play, but that game has been postponed due to wintry weather that blanketed Northwest Arkansas on Sunday. The game will be made up Jan. 28.

“That’s the whole point of how we schedule things,” Stamps said. “We want to play diff erent styles and diff erent people because once we get into our league from night to night, we’re going to see diff erent styles and diff erent ways people go about things.”

Bentonville (6-3) is scheduled to travel to Van Buren on Friday, before hosting much improved Springdale Har-Ber next week.

“After these three, we’ll have a good gauge of where we stand,” Bentonville coach Jason McMahan said. “We’ll know. If we’re 3-0, we’ll know we’re one of the best if not the best team in the league. If we’re 0-3, you know you’re in trouble.”

Springdale and Bentonville, as well as Van Buren, are preseason favorites to win the conference.

Bentonville features highly touted Malik Monk, a sophomore move-in from East Poinsett County.

Monk scored 65 points in three games in the Neosho, Mo., Classic over the Christmas break, including 30 points in a 71-59 loss to nationally ranked Weston (Fla.) Sagemont.

“We wanted to play games like those on neutral sites to prepare us for these games right out of the bat,” McMahan said.

Van Buren was 7-0 entering the Neosho Classic. The Pointers beat Kansas City Ruskin 49-46 before falling to Saint Joseph (Mo.) Lafayette 63-58 in overtime. Van Buren (9-1) defeated Springfield (Mo.) Parkview 44-37 in the third-place game.

Rogers Heritage (10-3) also had a good nonconference schedule, going 7-2 before losing to Mustang, Okla., 66-61 in the first game of the Mid-Del Holiday Tournament in Oklahoma City. Heritage defeated Guthrie, Okla., 60-30 and Oklahoma City Storm, a home-school team, to finish the tournament on a good note.

Heritage finished of its nonconference schedule with a 70-47 win against El Dorado last Friday.

Fayetteville (7-6) will also be a contender despite a whole new starting lineup off last year’s 14-0 conference champions.

GIRLS

Springdale Har-Ber (9-3) had a solid nonconference schedule, winning eight of nine games before the Mansfield, Texas Invitational.

The Lady Wildcats beat John Paul II 47-32 before losing to Flower Mound (Texas) Marcus 64-39 and Mansfield (Texas) Summit 59-46.

Bentonville (9-3) won the Neosho Classic, beating Carthage, Mo. 70-47 and East Newton, Mo. 56-45 before downing Webb City, Mo., 56-54 for the championship.

The Lady Tigers lost to Huntsville and defeated Carthage, Mo., to wrap up nonconference play.

Siloam Springs (10-2) could make noise in the conference as well, coming off a 70-67 loss in the championship game of its own tournament on Saturday night.

Fayetteville won the First Arkansas Bail Bonds Tournament in Mountain Home, beating North Pulaski 85-24 and Greenwood 58-53 before beating North Little Rock 53-38 for the title. Sophomore DaShundra Morgan scored 47 points in the tournament and was the Most Valuable Player.

The Lady Bulldogs (7-4) lost two of three games in its own Bulldog Classic. After beating Mountain Home, they lost to Little Rock Hall and rival Springdale High, a much improved team this season.

Springdale (6-5) won two of three in Fayetteville’s Bulldog Classic, beating Harrison, losing to Little Rock Central and beating Fayetteville.

ADJUSTING TO FOULS

Players, coaches, fans and referees are still adjusting to the new rules on hand checking and charges.

The NCAA rules committee tried to clean up the physical play during the off season and increase scoring by limiting defensive hand or forearm checking to impede the progress of an off ensive player.

High school athletic associations put the same rule into affect, and the result has been a massive disruption of the flow of the game, more fouls, more free throws, longer games and an outright frustration on the part of players and coaches.

“We’ve played in diff erent states and it’s been different,” McMahan said. “States have been different, crews have been different. It’s been tough.”

The rules were filtered down to the high school level during the summer.

“I started hearing about it during the summer at team camps,” McMahan said. “Most of our officials are college guys. Then we had meetings and knew that was going to be a point of emphasis that was going to be strongly upheld. It changed the way we practiced.”

In Bentonville’s 81-75 win against Clarksville to open the season, the two teams combined to shoot 82 free throws after 55 fouls were called.

“It got the attention of our team that it’s serious,” McMahan said. “We’ve worked not to foul, and we worked not to foul before that game.”

Clarksville coach Tony Davis said the game was an eye-opener for his team.

“There was never a point where there were two backto-back trips up and down the court without fouls,” he said. “I hope people get to watch basketball and not a free-throw shooting contest. I hope the teams can adjust and the oft cials can adjust.”

Of course more fouls means more players fouling out of the game, which actually had become pretty rare. It also means more free throws, which kills a flow to the game.

“The way the games are being called this year, you can’t get into any rhythm offensively or defensively because you don’t know really what you can do,” Van Buren coach Randy Loyd said. “Teams that can keep their best players in the game without getting in foul trouble and guys that can hit free throws at the end, because they’re going to call a lot of fouls, are the ones that are going to win.”

In Springdale’s 56-51 win against Pine Bluff, the Bulldogs attempted 34 free throws and 37 fi eld goals.

“Then you play games where guys are getting to the basket and making aggressive moves to attack the basket and they don’t make a call, and then you get a hand check called 45 feet from the basket,” Stamps said. “We’re telling them to attack the basket and we’ll get to the free-throw line. Then when it’s not called, it gets to you the way you’re executing the game and the way it’s called.”

Springdale played three games in the Coke Classic and three more games in Fayetteville’s Bulldog Classic.

“We played in two tournaments and all six of those games were called completely different,” Stamps said. “It’s hard for the players to adjust from game to game the way it’s going to be called.”