Whenever St. Aloysius’ basketball teams get back on the court, the players will have had plenty of rest and plenty of time to regroup for the next game if there is one.

Their coach is a different story.

Freezing rain and icy roads across central Mississippi forced St. Al and Sebastopol to postpone their first-round game in the Class 1A girls state tournament Monday night. It has been tentatively rescheduled for Wednesday at 7 p.m.

St. Al’s boys are scheduled to play at Durant tonight at 7, but the bad weather that is forecast to linger through Wednesday might force another reshuffling of the schedule.

When it’s all said and done, Thompson — who coaches both St. Al teams — could wind up coaching four games in four days in four different towns if both the Flashes and Lady Flashes can win their tournament openers.

“The weather messes things up a little bit,” Thompson said, adding with a chuckle, “Coaching both teams is going to be tough. The girls will have a day off in between, but I’ll have games Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday if we win.”

The Lady Flashes will have their hands full with a tough Sebastopol team that boasts a 21-3 record and won the Division 6-1A tournament.

Thompson said he planned to spend the extra day studying film, but wasn’t sure how much of an edge the delay would give his team. St. Al dismissed class early Monday and canceled all after school activities, including basketball practice.

“I’ll keep them busy,” Thompson said. “We’re going to go over some stuff that’ll helps in the game. Mostly little stuff. If we don’t know it by now, it’s not going to help.”

Thompson’s teams are the only ones from Warren County left standing. Vicksburg and Warren Central’s boys and girls teams were eliminated in their respective division tournament consolation games last week.

The county’s baseball and softball teams, however, are being negatively affected by the storm.

Teams at Warren Central and Vicksburg have lost valuable practice time as they prepare for their season openers this weekend. Porters Chapel Academy’s baseball team has had it even worse.

PCA’s season began last week, but it has thus far been able to play just one of the four games on its schedule. Two were rained out last week, and this week’s ice storm forced the postponement of a home game Monday against Tri-County and another tonight at Hillcrest Christian.

The game against Tri-County has been tentatively rescheduled for Thursday night, but PCA coach Wade Patrick said he was skeptical it would be played because of poor field conditions.

Even the one game PCA has played was moved up a day because of the threat of rain.

“It’s typical beginning of the year baseball. It’s cold and wet. You just deal with it. There’s nothing else you can do,” Patrick said. “The most frustrating thing is not being able to see a lot of live pitching. Everybody’s in the same boat. We just haven’t been able to see some of the good competition we were supposed to see the first couple of weeks.”

And, Patrick added, the Eagles might never see it.

The team has 27 games on the regular season schedule. There’s only two stretches where it goes more than four days without a game. One of those is next week, and the other is during spring break.

With so few open dates, and opponents that have similar schedules, Patrick said that once a game is rained out it’s likely canceled for good.

“The hardest part is rescheduling, because you’re so limited on dates. You’re already playing three or four games a week,” Patrick said. “If we can’t play these games this week, more than likely we’re not going to be able to.”

Hinds Community College’s baseball team, ranked No. 2 in the country, has also dealt with a rash of postponements.

A doubleheader today against Panola (Texas) has been canceled and Friday’s home doubleheader against Mississippi Delta was moved to Thursday at 11 a.m. at Smith-Wills Stadium in Jackson. The schedule changes are the fourth and fifth Hinds has made in the past two weeks.