Dating to last Thursday, Dutch-town had won seven of its previous eight games to make up for a 2-7 start to the season.

As of Monday, the Bulldogs had played three games in four days with a fourth to come on Tuesday. For Dutchtown, it is this stretch of games that will decide their fate in the Region 4-AAAA tournament.

“It’s a killer stretch,” Dutchtown coach Bernard Farrell said of playing four games in five days. “Three of those are region games. It’s kind of going to have a big impact on where we finish.”

As of press time Monday after-noon, Dutchtown’s record stood at 9-10 overall, 6-6 in Region 4-AAAA following consecutive losses to Stockbridge and Sandy Creek with games remaining against Alcovy and North Clayton during that stretch.

Dutchtown finishes the week on Friday by hosting Alcovy. The Monday game at Alcovy came as a result of schedule changes due to inclement weather last month, according to Farrell.

The schedule will test Dutch-town’s conditioning more than at any other point in the season.

“I think we’ll play well,” Farrell said before the first game of the stretch last week. “Hopefully, the drills you do are conditioning. We have a rotation of six or seven guys anyway, so they should be pretty well conditioned.”

Leading into the region tourna-ment, the region remains open — outside of North Clayton’s four-game lead over Dutchtown going into Monday’s game. In order for the Bulldogs to reach their first state tournament in program his-tory, they will need to put in a solid effort ahead of the region tourna-ment to earn a better seed.

“Last year, we won the region play-in game and had an opportu-nity if we had won the playoff game,” Farrell said. “But we lost to Jonesboro, and that’s the closest we had gotten.”

With increased expectations, Dutchtown will require increased leadership. This season, it will come from the team’s core group of four seniors in small forward Der-rick Brock, shooting guard Alphonzo Reid, point guard Travis May and power forward Avery Lynch.