CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Frankfort, East Hardy and Petersburg begin their state tournament runs at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center this week.
Frankfort and Petersburg ended lengthy tournament droughts with region final victories Thursday night. The Falcons are headed to states for the first time since 2010, and the Vikings haven’t done so since 2007.
East Hardy, meanwhile, extended its string of Charleston trips to four in a row.
Frankfort, seeded eighth in the Class AA tournament, is the first of the Potomac Valley Conference squads in action. The Falcons (15-9) battle top-seeded Wheeling Central Catholic (20-0) on Tuesday at 7:15 p.m.
East Hardy (20-4), the No. 4 seed in Class A, faces fifth-seeded Parkersburg Catholic (21-3) in the following game at 9 p.m.
Petersburg (17-7) takes the court the next morning. The No. 6 seed in the Class AA tournament takes on No. 3 seed Bluefield (16-6) on Wednesday at 11:15 a.m.
All three matchups are state quarterfinal games.
Frankfort punched its ticket with a 67-61 win over Lincoln in a Region II co-final, led by a game-high 33 points and 11 rebounds from Kycin Waites.
Waites accounted for the key sequence, going on a personal 8-0 in the fourth quarter to help Frankfort separate for good.
Frankfort surprised some being seeded eighth behind Logan, which is the only team with a below-.500 record (11-13) of the 32 state qualifiers across all four classes.
“We ain’t worried about it,” Waites said. “Honestly, we’re pretty excited. We just knew that we were going to be the eighth seed if we went to Charleston. We want to play the big dogs. We like being the underdogs.”
The one-two punch of Waites and Jeremy Phillips averages a combined 41.1 points per game.
Phillips leads the team with a 23.3 per game scoring mark and has a team-high 73 3-pointers. Phillips, a recent Frostburg State commit, crossed the 1,000-point threshold and became Frankfort’s all-time leading scorer during the regular season.
Waites posts 17.8 points a night, and Braeden Laffey adds 8.9.
Wheeling Central is the lone undefeated team in West Virginia and is led by 2025 state Player of the Year and Liberty signee Eli Sancomb, who scores 31.2 points per game.
Max Olejasz (14.8 ppg) and Luke Sancomb (12.1) also average double figures.
Wheeling Central coach Mel Stephens has won seven state championships in his 23 years with the school.
“They’ve been ranked No. 1 all season in our coaches poll,” Frankfort head coach Scott Slider said. “They always play tough competition. … They’re competing at a high level, so we’re going to expect that that’s how it’s going to be for us to win. We’re going to have to play at a high level too.
“And so far, we’ve stepped up to the plate in these games, and we’ve just got to step up to the plate (Tuesday) and do what we’ve got to do to be effective against them.”
East Hardy is looking to build on back-to-back semifinal appearances, but it first must topple a Parkersburg Catholic squad that is making its first trip to states since appearing in the Class A final in 2019.
The Cougars punched their ticket by beating Union, 47-35, in the Region II co-championship — their 15th consecutive win after falling to Fort Hill back on Jan. 21.
East Hardy’s 6-foot-8 big man Gideon Good averages a double-double with 16.7 points and 11.5 rebounds with 5.1 blocks a night.
Evan Hamilton, a 1,000-point scorer, adds 13.9 points a night, and Mason Hamilton also has a double-figure scoring mark (11.1) for the Cougars.
Parkersburg Catholic has four with double-digit points per game marks: Luke Anderson (14), Preston Randolph (13.4), Carter Nelson (10.5) and Leonardo DeAngelo (10.5).
Petersburg takes the Civic Center floor on Wednesday morning for the sixth time in school history.
The Vikings cruised past Braxton County, 66-50, in the Region II co-final to advance to the final 8.
“Why not us? Why can’t we go to Charleston and get a win and just see what happens,” Petersburg head coach Stacey Berg said after his team’s co-region final win.
“From what I have seen already and what I know, they’re a lot like us. So it should be a good matchup.”
Kaleb Kuhn is Petersburg’s top offensive weapon with a 21.3 scoring average. The senior, who scored his 1,000th point earlier this season, had a 49-point game in a 101-96 overtime loss to Pendleton County on March 2.
Caden Ours (19.4 points per game) and Payton Metheny (13.3) also average double figures for the Vikings.
Bluefield has a 1,000-point scorer of its own in Jase Smith.
The Beavers, who missed the tournament last year, were state runner-ups in 2024.