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The Washington High School boys and girls basketball teams had Tuesday off before returning to the grind that is the Eastern Plains Conference.

The Pam Pack boys have been on an upswing the past two weeks after completing a very tough non-conference season that included trips to five different showcase-style tournaments, including the John Wall Invitational national showcase in Raleigh and their own BTW 252 vs. 919 Winter Classic.

After then dropping their EPC opener at Farmville Central, which was the team’s fifth straight loss, the Pam Pack bounced back with impressive wins over state power Northwood along with EPC foes Greene Central and North Pitt. The Pack (10-5, 2-1 EPC) will go to SouthWest Edgecombe (10-2, 3-1 EPC) on Friday to face a Cougars squad that’s one-half game ahead of them in the standings.

Each EPC team gets a bye date due to the odd number of teams in the conference. The Pack got theirs after their 89-64 win last Thursday over North Pitt.

“We went on that big run and then gave us a chance to kind of like rest some guys, get some more people some experience, which you never know down the stretch,” Washington coach David Allewalt said about the second half against the Panthers. “You never know when that’s going to have to come into play. It was a good opportunity, good win for us.

“I thought the intensity level was really good early. I thought it might have been one of the best quarter and a half’s we played all year. We moved the ball really, really well.”

Allewalt said the Cougars present a tremendous challenge for his squad, one they hope to overcome as all eyes stay on the rematch at Washington with Farmville Central on Jan. 31.

“Yeah, and we play a lot better when we play in open space,” Allewalt said. “You know, that Northwood game, like we did a really good job of figuring out different ways to win a game because it was half-court set. It was like a state playoff game, and we did a real good job of that.

But if there’s certain teams that want to run up and down a floor with us all night, we’re going to be way better in space just because we can find the open seams, the open areas. We have three or four guys that can really knock down jumpers. So, I mean, that kind of caters to us.

“So if teams are going to let us do that, then, you know, I would think like 90% of the time we’re probably going to come out on the right end of that.”