The month of March has been good to Pine Bluff Coach Clarence Finley.
Finley has compiled a 37-21 record since making his return to high school coaching last season, but he's 7-0 in March. For him, that means his teams are playing their best basketball at the right time.
"We've turned a corner or two by the time we've gotten in March," he said. "We've played better, and we've showed better focus. For us, that's big because we want to be playing well by the time the state tournament starts."
Pine Bluff (20-8), winners of nine of its past 10 games, will try to keep Finley's unbeaten mark in March intact Saturday when it takes on Little Rock Parkview (26-3) for the Class 6A state championship at 11 a.m. in Bank of the Ozarks Arena in Hot Springs.
There was nearly a 13-year gap between state title game appearances for Finley before last season. Finley led Pine Bluff to the 6A crown last March by beating Jonesboro 46-43. Prior to that, the last time Finley reached a championship game as a coach was in 2002 when he guided Little Rock Central to a runner-up finish in what was then Class 5A. Coincidentally, it was Parkview that beat Central in the final and denied Finley his first state title.
The Patriots will again be opposite Finley, but the circumstances are different this time. Parkview has won 16 of its past 17 games and has two players committed to Division I programs in Ryan Pippins (UALR) and Khalil Garland (Memphis). The Patriots also won both games against the Zebras this season, with the second meeting resulting in a 69-45 blowout.
But Parkview hasn't won a state championship since 2012 and lost to Pine Bluff in the second round of last year's 6A tournament. So in a sense, it's the Zebras who are in the Patriots' way.
But Finley knows what challenges await his team.
"Parkview is Parkview," he said. "They're going to get after you on defense, and they've got guys like Pippins and C.J. White who can really shoot the three and cause problems all over the floor.
"And then they've got Garland and [Javon Franklin] who are animals on the offensive glass. So we know we're going to have our work cut out for us."
Finley likes the progress his team has made throughout the season and believes it has another gutsy performance in it, similar to the one it had during its 65-51 semifinal victory over El Dorado. But he also admitted that it's been hard to get a clear read on this year's team, which has made things difficult.
"You just never know sometimes with these guys," he said. "They've taken on the mentality of our two leaders, Caleb Parker and Marcus Thomas, and they're both laid-back guys. So some nights, the team will come out laid back and passive. Me, I'm an aggressive kind of guy, and it's hard to get them to come out that way sometimes.
"But when they're locked in from the start, focused and ready to play, we're a pretty good team. They know they can play with anybody, and they believe they can beat anybody."
Thomas' 30 points against El Dorado catapulted the Zebras back into the title game, but according to Finley, Pine Bluff believed it'd be back in the title game as soon as the season began. Once the brackets were unveiled, his players were more confident.
Last year, the Zebras were a No. 6 seed and had to beat two No. 1 seeds just to get to the final. This year, Pine Bluff gained a No. 3 seed and had to face only one top seed (Russellville) on its way to the championship game.
"We were almost sure we'd get back to the championship," Finley said. "We don't really have a true post presence like we did last year, but we just felt we were a better team overall. So when that bracket came out, we really felt we'd be in the final against either Jonesboro or Parkview.
"It was just a matter of us staying focused and being prepared to play every night in the tournament."
Pine Bluff can become the first school to win football and basketball championships in the same calendar sports year in back-to-back seasons with a victory.
"We've been steady all year," Finley said. "In the first game against Parkview, we didn't knock down open shots and lost by five. In the second game, [Parkview] killed us with second and third shots, plus our transition defense was horrible.
"We've got to start off fast and keep them off the glass. The guys have been pretty focused all week, and hopefully they'll come out that way Saturday. I know Parkview will be."
Sports on 03/10/2016