By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

BAY ST. LOUIS — After a bit of a delay, St. Stanislaus enters the home stretch of Region 8-3A play with its sights set on the top seed in the upcoming league tournament.

And, the subsequent automatic berth in the Class 3A South State playoffs that comes with it.

The Rock-A-Chaws, under the direction of fourth-year head coach and former SSC standout Daniel Grieves, stand a perfect 5-0 in the region race after a 49-36 win over visiting St.Patrick last week.

That win came on the heels of a 43-23 thumping on the road in New Augusta over Perry Central the day before. St. Stanislaus, which sits at 13-6 overall, will have been off for 11 days when they travel to Tylertown for a region date with the Chiefs on Saturday in a contest that was originally slated for Tuesday.

“St. Patrick is a quality team and has been for some time,” Grieves, the all-time leading scorer at SSC who led his Rocks to a state championship during his senior season in 2011, said. “It has taken us some time to turn our program in this direction. We have been training for this. In years past, we would have lost games like this. The 10th graders in the program were 7th graders when I took over. They are not afraid of hard work and that is a testament to them. I love my team. They show up to work every day and work like a blue collar team.”

The back-to-back wins in SSC’s last two games vaulted the Rocks into the top spot in the league standings. St. Stanislaus can clinch the top seed with a win Saturday night and then another win on the road Tuesday night against the arch-rival Fighting Irish in a re-match from last week.

The top seed entering the region tourney earns an opening round bye and is automatically assured on a state playoff berth.

In the win over Perry Central last week, junior standout Max Baria dropped in seven first half points, including a 3-pointer, and his front court mate Jason Forte chipped in six points as the Rocks rolled out to a double digit advantage at halftime 17-7.

Baria and teammate Allan Gilliam then quickly dashed any hopes the home-standing Bulldogs had of a second half comeback as Baria added six more points in the third frame and Gilliam dropped in four points in that quarter and six more in the fourth period as SSC refused to let the ‘Dogs out.

Baria tallied a game-high 15 points despite fouling out with two minutes to play for the Rocks, while Gilliam added 14 points to the winning effort.

The following night, in the win over SPHS, Gilliam carried over that momentum from the second half against PCHS as he poured in a game-high 22 points followed by Carter Macias with 10 points.

The Irish were led by Brendan Moton with 14 points and Liam Buchanan with 11 points.

St. Patrick sits at 3-3 in the region race and in the third spot in the standings. After the loss to SSC last week, the Fighting Irish split two more league games beating West Marion 51-46 on Friday before falling to Perry Central 46-38 Monday night.