SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Saturday will mark 10 days since the UNC Pembroke men’s and women’s basketball teams took to the floor for a game. Now, after that prolonged gap, they’ll play their biggest games of the season to date.

Both programs are the top-seeded team entering the Conference Carolinas Tournament, and will play semifinal games on Saturday. The Braves men will face Barton at 12:30 p.m. and the Lady Braves are set for a 5:15 p.m. contest, also against Barton. The tournament is being played at Wofford University’s Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium.

“Understanding the whole (10) days between our last game and our first tournament game is a science that I haven’t mastered yet, so we just wanted to switch it up a little bit, take maybe a day off here instead of a day off there, maybe push them harder on this day and lighter on this day,” UNCP men’s coach Drew Richards said. “So we’ll see if it works out. We’ve had some tough days of practice, we’ve had some lighter days of practice and we tried to mix up how we were doing things with preparation this week.”

The Braves men (21-6) lost 82-75 in overtime against Chowan on Feb. 28 in their last outing to end the regular season. Richards said after the game he hoped the Braves would use the loss as motivation, and said Thursday that that’s largely been the case in the week-plus since.

“I think for some it was a motivating factor in the back of their minds; others, it might have put them in a rut and we’ve tried to get them out of that,” Richards said. “I really do think we’ve had a good week in preparation with some good energy in practices. Now whether that translates to the game or not is to be seen, but I’m pretty optimistic.”

Despite being the top seed in each of the last two postseasons, the Braves have yet to win the Conference Carolinas Tournament title in Richards’ tenure as head coach, though he was on the staff when the Braves won Peach Belt Conference tournament titles in 2017 and 2018.

“That’s something that’s kind of evaded us,” Richards said. “I’m kind of using that as motivation, utilizing NCAA Tournament hopes — I told the guys, there’s a lot of motivation, and I think for anyone in the region we have more to gain this weekend than anybody else. Hopefully, whatever the motivation may be for our staff and players, there’s enough storyline there to keep us focused and locked in for at least a couple days.”

UNCP enters the Conference Carolinas Tournament as the fifth-ranked team in the Southeast Region rankings, with eight NCAA Tournament bids to be awarded on Sunday. This suggests the Braves would likely earn an at-large bid if necessary, but they’ll try to win this weekend’s tournament title and claim the automatic bid.

No. 5 Barton (15-15) advanced to Saturday’s semifinal with a 70-67 win over No. 4 Francis Marion in Friday’s quarterfinal, featuring a 24-0 second-half run. UNCP previously beat the Bulldogs 82-67 at home on Jan. 17 and 77-73 in Wilson on Feb. 15.

With their next opponent unclear for most of the break between the regular season and tournament, with the Braves only learning they would play Barton at about lunchtime on Friday as the quarterfinal game concluded, the Braves prepared in a more of a broader sense, but one which could give them their best chance to beat either potential opponent.

“(Barton and Francis Marion) both like to play fast and in transition, so we have to get back in transition defense, especially a lot better than we did last game,” Richards told The Robesonian Thursday. “Both of them pride themselves on steals and physical defense, so we’ve worked on a lot of execution and a lot of taking care of the basketball.”

On the opposite side of the tournament bracket, No. 2 Emmanuel received a bye to the semifinals and will face No. 3 Chowan, who beat No. 6 Lees-McRae in Friday’s quarterfinals. The winners of each semifinal will meet at 1 p.m. Sunday in the tournament championship.

Lady Braves look to repeat

The UNCP women’s basketball team did not enter last year’s Conference Carolinas Tournament as one of the favorites as the No. 3 seed and a team reeling from an injury to one of its leaders just days earlier.

This year, the Lady Braves enter the tournament as the defending champions and the No. 1 seed.

“I think just walking in that gym should give us some good vibes — it doesn’t mean anything, it was a year ago — but we’ve got some good vibes in there, we’ve had some success in there,” UNCP women’s coach John Haskins said. “Getting the ball in the hole is such an important thing, and if we do that we’ll be fine. I think if we do that, we’ll be fine, and if we struggle to score, struggle to shoot the ball, we’ll have our work cut out for us.”

But while this time UNCP (21-7) has a bigger target on its back, the team still finds itself in a similar situation regarding postseason possibilities; with the Braves unranked in the latest Southeast Region rankings, they’ll most likely need to win the Conference Carolinas Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament field when brackets are released on Sunday night.

“I don’t think much has changed; we’re going in knowing that if we want to keep our season going we need to win the tournament,” said Haskins, who hopes to extend his final season before retirement. “It’s two games versus three this year, so that’s going to be a little different, but they’re all going to be tough games — regardless of whether it’s Emmanuel or Barton, and then whether it’s Young Harris, Belmont Abbey or Francis Marion, they’re going to be tough games and I think games that could go either way.”

Like the men’s team, the Lady Braves have not played in 10 days since the regular-season finale against Chowan, which UNCP won 69-62. As the team had more intensive practices earlier this week, in about the middle of that 10-day span, it came at a price: forward Hannah Russell is considered day-to-day after an ankle injury in practice.

The Braves carry momentum into this tournament — more so than they did last year en route to the title — having won nine of their last 10 games.

“We kind of laid an a little bit offensively down at Converse, but except for that … we’ve had a good stretch of games and we’re playing pretty well,” Haskins said. So I definitely think there’s some good confidence, some good momentum.”

No. 10 Barton (11-19), which won the tournament in 2022, beat No. 5 Emmanuel 60-53 in the quarterfinals Friday to advance to Saturday’s matchup with the Lady Braves. UNCP swept the regular-season series with Barton, winning 76-45 on Jan. 17 in Pembroke and 60-52 on Feb. 15 in Wilson.

On the other side of the bracket, No. 2 Francis Marion will Saturday face No. 3 Belmont Abbey, which defeated No. 6 Young Harris Friday. The semifinal winners will play for the championship at 4 p.m. Sunday.