Although bounced from its conference tournament by Westchester Academy last week, the O’Neal boys’ basketball team is still entered in the independent schools state 1-A tournament.

The Falcons earned an eighth-place seed in the 16-team tournament that starts today at Fayetteville Academy. The Falcons are scheduled to play Halifax at 1 p.m. today. If they win that game they will face the winner of the Waccamaw-Word of God game on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. in Fayetteville.

Word of God is the number-one seeded team in the tournament.

O’Neal won its first-round game in the Triad Athletic Conference tournament held at O’Neal last week. The Falcons defeated Cressett 67-54 in the first-round game with Scott Royalty scoring 31 points and grabbing 10 rebounds while dishing out three assists. John Justice also hit double figures with 10 points, while Randy Quis dished out eight assists and had five rebounds.

In the semifinals, the Falcons ran up against Westchester, a 2-A school, for the third time this season and for the third time Westchester held off a determined O’Neal squad. Westchester won the game 55-45. Once again, the Falcons were led by Royalty, who had 13 points. Adam Crenshaw had 10 points, while Quis and Justice had seven points each.

Oak Ridge beat Westchester by two points in the tournament championship game.

Falcon point guard Quis, a junior, and forward Royalty, a senior, were selected to the eight-member all-conference team.

The Triad Conference has six members, with some like O’Neal in the 1-A classification and others, like Westchester and Oak Ridge, in the 2-A classification.

“Because of the strength of the conference we play in,” Falcon coach Rick Gehl said, “we had got a good seed in the 1-A state tournament. We won all but one game we should have this season and in the other games we played well. We played two of the top-five 2-A schools (Oak Ridge and Westchester) in the state five times this season.”