High school basketball playoffs rescheduled after blizzard

The blizzard of 2026 had quite an impact on the high school sports schedule. All boys and girls public school basketball playoff games scheduled for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were postponed and rescheduled for later this week.

“People can check the Section XI website for the updated information," Tom Combs, the executive director for Section XI, which governs all Suffolk school sports. "We gave the athletes an extra day to get ready for the playoffs because schools were closed the first two days of this week and they couldn’t practice.”

Combs said no other sports were impacted and this weekend's state tournaments in wrestling and gymnastics were unaffected. He did add that he was concerned that the impending storms later this week and next week could impede travel to school and state events.

“We’ll address those schedules as needed,” he said. “It’s been a rough winter. And traveling through residential neighborhoods for our buses has been a challenge. We want everyone to be smart and stay safe. We can always reschedule.”

The coordination of the rescheduling also heavily impacted the basketball schedules in Nassau County.

“The reschedule was not as easy as one would think," said Jennifer Keane, the director of athletics for Wantagh schools and Nassau assistant sport coordinator for boys basketball. "There is a lot of coordination between the schools, venue owners, officials and buses. And we had to make sure the venues were available for our games.”

The Nassau Class B girls basketball semifinals were rescheduled for Friday at Malverne High School:

• No. 4 East Rockaway will play No. 1 Cold Spring Harbor at 5 p.m.
• No. 3 Oyster Bay will meet No. 2 Carle Place at 7 p.m.

One set of semifinals was moved a day earlier to accommodate the availability for all schools in the six classifications. The Nassau Class A girls basketball semifinals at Farmingdale State were originally scheduled for this Friday but were moved to Thursday at the same site.

• No. 1 Wantagh will meet No. 4 Plainedge at 6:30 p.m.
• No. 2 Seaford will play No. 3 Floral Park at 8:30 p.m.

The Nassau Class AA boys basketball quarterfinals moved to Thursday. All four games will be played at the higher seed.

• No. 7 Hewlett at No. 2 Roslyn, 5 p.m.
• No. 9 Long Beach at No. 1 South Side, 4:30 p.m.
• No. 5 Manhasset at No. 4 Jericho, 7 p.m.
• No. 6 Elmont at No. 3 Garden City, 6 p.m.

The Nassau Class B boys basketball semifinals, originally scheduled for Monday, were rescheduled to Friday at Jericho High School.

• No. 4 Oyster Bay will meet No. 1 Carle Place at 5 p.m.
• No. 3 East Rockaway will play No. 2 Cold Spring Harbor at 7 p.m.

By Gregg Sarra

gregg.sarra@newsday.com@Gregg_Sarra

Gregg Sarra is Newsday's high school sports editor and has been on the beat since the mid-1980s.