Wednesday was Tennis Night in the Northwood Nuthouse. Or was it Preppie Night?

With their basketball team able to handle things on the court at Northwood High School, fans from the student body, who have modeled their cheering section on the Cameron Crazies, are free to consider the event a theme party.

For last week's Northwood wins over East Chapel Hill, the student section was resplendent in baby blues and pink, with sweaters draped over shoulders, tennis shoes on feet and racquets in hand.

The intensity level was appropriately laid back, despite two relatively close finishes.

East Chapel Hill, 4A underdogs in the road games facing 2A power programs, made runs at the Chargers in both the girls' and boys' game, but Northwood never trailed in the second half of either game.

The Northwood girls (17-3), ranked No. 11 by the News & Observer, won 49-41, and the Charger boys (14-6) won 51-44.

The most intense person in Charger Gym might have been Northwood girls coach Cameron Vernon. On the cusp of his girls clinching the Carolina-12 Conference's No. 1 post-season seed, he didn't want to see them take their foot off the gas.

"East Chapel Hill played much tougher than we did," Vernon said. "I think in the end they deserved to win. They got every loose ball; they got every rebound; they out-hustled us in every aspect of the game. I think we were very, very fortunate to come out on top."

But he did allow that "when it's all said and done, when you can play ugly and come out on top with a win, it's nice."

East (6-13) fought back from a wretched start, when it fell behind 20-6 after one quarter, to get within 29-21 by halftime.

The Wildcats made it a three-point game, 41-38, on a short jumper by Ally Mack with 2:15 left to play. But then two misses and two turnovers by East allowed Northwood to get some breathing room.

Mack, East's lone returning player off last year's team, finished with a game-high 25 points.

Northwood missed five of its last eight free throws, but Yancey Luft hit two to put the Chargers ahead 48-38 with 51 seconds to go.

Shelby Wolfe, who finished with 24 points to pace Northwood's scoring, noted missed free throws down the stretch hurt the Chargers in each of their three losses.

"You can always get better as a team," Wolfe said. "We need to be physically tough and mentally tough as it gets down to the wire."

Finishing strong

The boys' game closely mirrored the girls', and coach Ray Hartsfield's East Chapel Hill team fought back from a 31-22 deficit midway through the third quarter to get within one point heading into the fourth.

After a Northwood turnover with 3.7 seconds left in the third, Cam Smith took the inbounds pass from Will Buckley and knifed his way past four startled Northwood defenders for an uncontested layup at the horn, cutting the Chargers' lead to 33-32.

That seemed to awaken the Chargers, who started a 12-3 run in the fourth period with a 3-pointer by Aumad Walker. He later capped the run with a layup in traffic with 3:15 left in the game, making the lead 45-35.

On the defensive end, Northwood's jumble of zones, traps and presses held the Wildcats to 17-of-39 shooting from the field, with 15 blown layups.

"Typical Northwood basketball means changing defenses ... extremely organized chaos, as I used to like to say," Charger coach Russ Frazier said.

The Wildcats missed six of their last nine shots from the field and turned over three other possessions in the game's final 3:30 of play.

Their loss undid some of the progress the Wildcats (8-11) showed in getting a PAC-6 Conference win Tuesday night over Riverside, 60-52.

"We're consistently inconsistent. That's been our story," Hartsfield said. "We'll show some progress in a ball game and look like we're going to turn the corner. Then we'll take a step back."

Like the 'Cats, Northwood (14-6) picked up a conference win Tuesday. The Chargers knocked off Granville Central, 75-67, to improve to 11-0 in the Carolina-12 and take over first place by themselves in the league.

"That's one of the reasons we're playing this (non-conference) game in January," Frazier said. "I wanted to see us in back-to-back ball games, like in a tournament. ... I wanted to see how we'd play on tired legs, to see if we could come back and get ready to start throwing punches again."

Cam Pappas led Northwood's scoring with 15 points, while Mark Goods had 11 and John Wieland and Ti Pinnix eight apiece.

Smith scored a game-high 18 to lead East Chapel Hill. Michael Newton added 10 and Justen Best nine points.