MOULTRIE — Colquitt County girls basketball coach Joe Parker has a delicate line to walk tonight as he prepares his team for its first game in the Region 1-AAAAA tournament that opens today at the Tift County High Arena.

The Lady Packers, the No. 3 seed, will face Valdosta, a team that went 0-10 in region games and was futile in its two attempts to knock off Colquitt County this season.

The Lady Packers beat the Lady Wildcats by 23 points when the two teams met in Moultrie and by 32 in the rematch in Valdosta.

How does he get his team to focus on the task at hand and not look ahead to a possible meeting with Lowndes on Friday?

“You have to make sure there’s some respect and fear there,” Parker said.

“And you’ve got to be confident and do the things that made you successful the first two times you played them.”

Both the Colquitt County girls and boys teams face elimination in tonight’s games.

A victory by the Lady Packers over Valdosta and by the Packers over Coffee will qualify those teams for the state tournament.

They then would play on Friday for a chance to play a first-round home state tournament game. A Friday victory would mean a chance for the tournament championship on Saturday.

A loss tonight will end the season for the eight teams trying to qualify for the state tournament.

Houston County’s No. 4-seeded girls will meet Coffee at 4 p.m. today to tip off the tournament.

Colquitt’s boys will try to rediscover their game when they meet the Trojans at 5:30 p.m.

The Lady Packers and Lady Wildcats will go at it at 7 p.m.

The Lowndes and Valdosta boys will square off at 8:30 tonight.

Parker said he wants his team (16-8 overall and 6-4 in the region) to jump on the Lady Wildcats hard and early and not have to scrap for a victory with Lowndes looming.

“We didn’t play real well the first time we played them,” Parker said. “But we played pretty well over there. Once we started pushing it, it got lopsided.”

The Lady Packers will start senior Jessica Lemus and sophomore Taquella Coates in the front court.

Coates is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 10.3 points a game. She scored 19 points in the first meeting with Valdosta this season and had 11 in the second.

Senior Dorothy Strong will start at point guard. Senior Ashley Stafford and junior Nikki Hudson will be the wings.

Stafford is second on the team in scoring with a 10.0 average and leads the team in rebounds. She appears headed for a second straight berth on the All-Region team.

She had 12 and 10 points in the two games against the Lady Wildcats this season.

Parker will turn to Nicolle Thomas, Tiffany Troupe and Laquita Smith for quality minutes off the bench.

Thomas scored 13 points in the Lady Packers win at Valdosta.

Colquitt has won three of its last four games heading into the tournament, including region victories over Houston County and Lowndes.

Its one loss in that stretch, however, was at Coffee last week by a 39-33 score.

A victory would send the Colquitt County girls to the state tournament for the eighth straight season.

Valdosta’s girls are playing under first-year coach Julie McCutcheon and while they are winless in the region, their last three games have been a five-point loss to Tift County, a three-point loss to Houston and a six-point loss to Lowndes.

The Lady Cats are led on the court by Shanavier Walker and Jonnita George.

Colquitt County’s boys will play perhaps the hottest team in the tournament when they tip off against Coffee at 5:30 tonight.

The Trojans are 15-10 overall and are 5-5 in the region, but those numbers are deceptive.

Coffee has won four of its last five region games and its one loss in that stretch was a double-overtime defeat at the hands of regular-season champion Tift County.

Among those four victories was a convincing 73-53 victory over the Packers in Douglas last week.

Colquitt County won the first meeting between the two teams, taking a 64-58 decision on Jan. 10.

But since then, the Packers have won just three of 11 games and just two of seven in the region.

Coffee is under the direction of veteran coach Wade Hughes. His team does not have much height, but is quick and can get on a roll offensively as it did in the victory over the Packers in Douglas.

Colquitt will have to pay special attention to the Trojans’ Quam Hancock.

The Packers will counter with Kirven Davis, who will be coaching in his first Region 1-AAAAA tournament game after spending the last five seasons as an assistant at Westover.

The Packers are stumbling into the tournament, having dropped six of their last seven. They did defeat Thomas County Central 69-43 to get their record up to .500 at 12-12 heading into the tournament.

The Packers have counted all season on the scoring of seniors Antwan Tuff and James Trimble and junior Andrew Wallace. Junior Orion Ponder and senior Jeremy DeBruce have rounded out the starting five much of the season.

Davis has turned to junior Rashawn Melvin more of late for some scoring punch off the bench. Ronald Wilson, Corey Goss, Kamari Peterson, Amar Parikh and Duke Banks also could see action as the Packers battle for a rare state berth.

A victory would send the Packers against top-seeded Tift County. The Blue Devils swept both Colquitt County and Coffee, but go into the tournament with a two-game losing streak, falling to Lowndes and Houston County in their final two games.

Admission to the tournament is $7 for those 5 and older. Those under 5 will be admitted free.