By DAN BISER
Sports Editor

Three years ago, the Whiteville High girls basketball team advanced to the Eastern 2A Regional Tournament in Greenville and dropped a last-minute heart-breaker to Southern Vance in the semi-finals.

Last year, the Lady Wolfpack was back at the regional tournament where it took a decisive semi-final win over First Flight before falling to Farmville Central in overtime in the title game. Farmville Central went on to win the state championship the following week.

Now, the Lady Wolfpack is back in the regional tournament for the third time in four years and hoping that this could be the time to come away with the title. The WHS girls are the only team returning from last year’s 2A regional field.

Whiteville, holding a 24-3 season record after defeating Pasquotank 55-52 in the sectional finals last Saturday at South Lenoir, will take on the Lady Panthers of Hillsborough Orange (23-7) in the semi-final round Friday night at 8:30 at the J.H. Rose High School gym in Greenville. The Orange squad is carrying a 13-game winning streak.

The Whiteville-Orange winner will take on the winner of Friday’s 7 p.m. semi-final game between Fairmont (21-5) and Graham (29-1) in Saturday’s 7 p.m. championship game.

“We’re looking at a very strong field,” said WHS coach Dudley Revels, who has guided the Lady Wolfpack to their return trip to Greenville in his first season as head varsity girls coach. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Whiteville senior point guard Talena Faison will be playing in the regional tournament as a full-time starter for the third time. She is averaging 17.5 points per game and 6.6 assists per outing, and has made a strong return to the line-up after missing six games with a mid-season ankle injury. Faison played in last year’s regional with a broken finger on her shooting hand.

Junior forward Paige McCallum returns for her second regional and is averaging a whopping 24.3 points and 11.5 rebounds this season, making her one of the most-watched juniors in the state by college scouts. McCallum, younger sister of three-time WHS All-Stater Shannon McCallum who graduated last year, averaged 27 points in the Lady Wolfpack’s first three playoff games. Senior center Portia Baldwin suffered a shoulder separation in last year’s regional semi-finals and had to sit out the championship game. She is averaging 8.5 rebounds an outing while junior forward Sarah Gore averages 7.3 rebounds per game..

“We need to play strong, aggressive defense,” Revels said. “We need to come out focused, move our feet and block out on the boards. We’ve had to battle hard to win our last two games (over Red Springs and Pasquotank) and it is going to take the same kind of effort on Friday.”

Both McCallum and Baldwin played with serious second-half foul trouble in the wins over Red Springs and Pasquotank. Revels said that the Lady Wolfpack can’t put itself in that type of predicament at the regional level.

“We’ll have to play smart, sound basketball,” he said.

The Lady Wolfpack won its third the Waccamaw Conference regular-season championship and finished runnerup to Pender in the conference tournament. Its only other losses came against East Bladen and East Columbus.

The Orange squad of Coach Ginger Ford is young but extremely talented. Sherrita Motley, the team’s only senior, averages 14 points per game and played a big role in leading the Lady Panthers to a huge win over Graham for the Mid-State Conference Tournament championship. It was the only loss suffered by Graham this season.

Antavia Boone also averages 14 points in Orange’s balanced offense while Bianca Richburg is averaging 11 points and 13 rebounds per outing.

Orange defeated Bunn 50-42 to advance to the regional tournament.

Fairmont, runnerup in the Southeastern 1A-2A Conference, has advanced to the regionals following its sectional finals victory over East Central Conference champion Southwest Onslow last Saturday.