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The Albemarle men’s basketball team was one of two high school varsity teams from Stanly which finished the regular season with a record above the .500 mark.

Along with North Stanly, the Bulldogs finished the regular season with a 13-11 mark, but Albemarle finished third in the Yadkin Valley Conference standings overall and had the best mark of the 1A teams in the split conference.

Albemarle earned a bid into the 1A state playoffs as the No. 10 seed, hosting the No. 23-seeded Starmount Rams Tuesday.

Starmount used a 12-2 run to take the lead in the opening quarter and fought off a late surge by the Bulldogs for a 66-61 win.

“Honestly, it’s been that way all season,” Bulldogs head coach Chauncey Bruton said. “We had to persevere through a lot of different things, losing a couple players throughout the season. We’ve had to fight through a lot of things.”

Bruton complimented the play of sophomore guard William Brown, who played varsity last year.

“He’s got that no-quit attitude, and you saw that as a reflection of him in the fourth quarter,” Bruton said.

Looking back on the season, Bruton said one standout was Zyion Geiger, a sophomore who finished in the top 10 in the YVC in scoring.

“That’s with him having a rough first half of the season that turned around at Christmas,” Bruton said.

The Bulldogs graduate five seniors this season: Rankin, C.J. Ellis, Tim Brown, DJ Crump and Jaziah Cole.