JONESVILLE — Despite winning twice against opponent Northwood in the regular season, Block head coach K.G. Watkins said he’s not taking anything for granted in the first round of the playoffs Friday.

Block defeated Northwood 48-38 Jan. 12, and again Jan. 29 61-45. However, Watkins said he’s wary of his team being too comfortable when it takes Northwood on for a third time.

“We had some good luck against them, but going into the playoffs, it’s a whole new season,” Watkins said. “We just have to make sure we have everything looking good.

“At least it’s a team that we’ve seen, but I’m a little tentative about playing a game against someone (a third time), because I don’t want our guys saying, ‘We’ve beaten them already,’ and getting comfortable. We have to make sure we go out and establish ourselves early.”

Watkins added that there are advantages and disadvantages to playing a team you’ve seen in the regular season again.

“On one hand, they know we’ve beaten them twice, so we know we can beat them, but I’m sure they’re thinking they can get one out of three.”

In order to win, Watkins said he team would have to continue to play strong defense.

“Our team right now is built around team defense, which has been fairly solid for us all year,” Watkins said. “We have some young players, but these guys aren’t rookies anymore. I’m still expecting big things from them, we just have to play almost perfect, make few mental mistakes and play hard for 32 minutes.”

Watkins said he intentionally exposed his young team to a strong out-of-conference schedule in order to better prepare them for the postseason.

“We purposefully played a lot of high-caliber team, because I felt if we were going to be successful in the playoffs, we needed to play those schools. We went 13-13 on the season, and 7-3 in the district, so we didn’t do as well as I would have liked, but we did OK.”

While the boys were originally set to take on Northwood Thursday, the day was changed to Friday in order to accommodate the Lady Bears.

“Our girls played (Monday) night, and since they won, they’re going to play in the quarterfinals, which means they’ll play here Thursday. So, now our game is Friday.

“This is a good thing. We’ll always be supportive of our girls, and we’ll just wait until it’s our turn. When it is our turn, we’ll go out and take care of business.”