As football winds down, two Beaufort County teams will take to the hardwood for an early season matchup. Northside opens its season on the road at Washington tomorrow in the first of a two-game preconference series.

Coming off a 3-12 record and a last place finish in the Eastern Plains Conference, 2013’s class relegation has yet to pay dividends for head coach Steven Flowers and the Pam Pack. And with the football team still alive in the playoffs, the Pam Pack will only have seven players available for tomorrow’s game.

While understaffed, head coach Steven Flowers will likely rely the guard positions to keep pace with the Panthers’ deep roster and apply pressure on Edrice “Bam-Bam” Adebayo in the paint.

“John (Whitley) can play,” said Northside head coach Mike Proctor. “They have great guard play. They’ll give our guards a test because they haven’t been in that situation before. They had a bunch of big bodies last year. Of course, Stevie was their main guy. Losing him is going to hurt them, but I feel like they’re going to shoot it well. They can bang around on Bam. I feel like it’s going to be a real good game.”

Whitley averaged 6.4 points and 1.8 assist per game last season and should be the primary playmaker in the backcourt for the Pam Pack. With the graduation of Stevie Green, who averaged 20.3 points and 10 rebounds a game during his senior year, Flowers will have to find production from

For Northside, Adebayo will certainly be the X-factor in tomorrow’s contest. But despite his 6-foot-10 frame, the ESPN five-star recruit is the tallest player on his team by 10 inches. In terms of height out of the small forward and power forward positions, it’s Washington with the advantage.

“This year, all four of those other guys are going to spread the scoring around,” Proctor said. “It might be (Greene) Ikeem one game, it might be (Jabari) Ashe another game. I think they’ll just sort of spread it around. Some games they won’t be on and it might be Reggie (Slade). I don’t see us saying we’re going to need two guys to have a good game in order to win.”

The girls’ varsity game is scheduled to tipoff at 6 p.m., which the varsity boys will follow soon after.