Porters Chapel Academy clinched its second consecutive district championship three weeks ago.

When it comes to the playoffs, that’s the only thing it knows for certain.

Rain has delayed a key District 6-A game between Sylva-Bay and Lamar Christian until today. That means PCA won’t know its first-round opponent — or even when the series begins — until late tonight.

PCA will face the winner of that game on the road in Game 1, but it hasn’t been determined whether the series will begin on Tuesday or Thursday. Games 2 and 3 of the best-of-three series will be played as a doubleheader at PCA on Friday.

“It’s hard to get a game plan because you just don’t know. You don’t want to spend all that time gathering information and then it goes to waste,” PCA coach Wade Patrick said.

The Eagles have had plenty of idle time to work on their own game, though, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

By the time the series begins, they’ll have played just one game in 10 days. One scheduled game was rained out and another became a forfeit win over Veritas.

Patrick had his pitchers throw live during batting practice last week to give them some work. Hitters bunted to let the pitchers throw full speed without a protective screen. Although that helped, Patrick said the lack of game action was a concern heading into the postseason.

“It’s almost like another season opener. We’ve had three of them this year,” said Patrick, whose team had five games and a spring break tournament canceled because of weather in February and March. “And it’s not just the batting, it’s the game action, period. It’s the pitching, it’s the fielding. You don’t get the same speed and feel in practice.”

PCA will enter the playoffs with an 11-8 record that Patrick feels has them battle-tested. Seven of its eight losses have come against MAIS schools in larger classifications. The other was to Cathedral, an MHSAA Class 1A school that won its division and is a state championship contender.

“I like our situation with who we’ve played. We’ve seen some good pitching,” Patrick said. “Will that help us? I don’t know. But I do like that we’ve faced that this year. The problem now is the layoff. That’s something we have no control over.”

More than being rusty, Patrick admitted he was worried that the long gap between games might have blunted the momentum the Eagles built in the middle part of the season. They went undefeated within District 5-A to win that championship and secure a No. 1 seed for the playoffs, and had won 11 of 13 games before losing the regular season finale to Canton Academy.

Now, they need to hit the gas again to avoid a short stay in the postseason.

“Playoffs is all about getting hot at the right time. It’s not always the best team that wins, but it’s the team that gets hot at the right time,” Patrick said. “You have to have players that step up, and it’s always somebody that nobody expects. The records are out the window now. Everybody’s even, which is good.”