North Carolina High School Girls Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The thing a first-time voter here gets wrong

Most people who find this poll look for a vote total. They want to know how many votes it takes to win, whether 500 is enough, whether 2,000 is the ceiling. SI does not publish those numbers. The winner is announced the next week, inside the new ballot article, with no count attached. So the competitive landscape is mostly dark — and that is the first thing worth knowing, because it changes how you plan a campaign.

What the data does reveal is the field structure. The girls basketball poll carries roughly 10 nominees per week. The NC football poll, run by the same organizer, lists 15. Ten names in a weekly ballot means each competitor draws a larger average share even when the vote is evenly split. A single school that organizes its own base can move from baseline noise to a genuine plurality faster here than on a 15-name football ballot — because there are fewer targets dividing the total.

That compression is the structural fact a campaign should start with. Not "how many votes do I need," but "how many of the 10 names will actually have organized support behind them." Most weeks, only three or four will. The rest of the field is passively nominated. The race belongs to whoever does the organizing.

What the Feb 10, 2025 ballot reveals about the field

Ten nominees. Five recognizably different regions of North Carolina on one list. That is the Feb 10, 2025 ballot, and it is instructive because the geographic spread is typical, not unusual.

Lumberton and Asheville Christian are separated by roughly 280 miles on a map that runs from the Atlantic coastal plain to the Blue Ridge foothills. They land on the same ten-name ballot because the poll is statewide and genuinely classification-blind. Sara Larios of Asheville Christian competes outside NCHSAA classifications entirely as a private school; she still makes the same list as players from large public programs in Charlotte.

The practical consequence: most voters on any given week will not recognize more than one or two of the ten names. There is no Charlotte-wide name recognition that defeats a well-organized Lumberton or Moore County campaign. A school 90 miles from any other nominee on the list is not at a disadvantage — it is exactly as reachable to its own community as South Mecklenburg is to its own. Local organization is the whole game.

What earns a spot on the ballot

The stat lines from the Jan 21, 2025 nominees give the clearest picture available. That week included a player with 31 points, 11 rebounds, 5 steals, and 8 assists in one game, and another with 29 points, 8 rebounds, 5 steals, and 8 assists. A freshman posted 30 points and 11 rebounds. Another nominee had a game-winning layup on top of 12 points and 12 rebounds.

These are complete games, not just scoring nights. The SI editors appear to reward all-around contributions — someone who impacts possession, defense, and scoring in one box score stands out more than a pure scorer with nothing else on the line. A 40-point game from a team that lost in blowout might land a nomination; a 25-point, 10-assist, 7-steal double-double from the same week probably has a better chance.

Getting nominated at all requires that the performance reaches the editorial team. SI's North Carolina editors build the field from reported results. A coaching staff or program that sends the stat line — with the opponent, the score, and a note on any record or streak — before the ballot is set is doing the first and hardest part of the campaign work. A great game nobody flags can be missed entirely.

How the Sunday close shapes the race

Sunday is the deadline, full stop. The girls basketball ballot closes at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Sunday, which is the same close as the statewide North Carolina football poll — but unlike the SI regional football ballots (Dallas / North Texas closes Monday), there is no extra day for basketball. A campaign that was still catching up on Monday has already lost.

For vote campaigns running on this poll, that compresses the active window to roughly Monday through Sunday after publication. The best approach: get the school's network moving early in the week — the team's own group chats, the parents' association, alumni channels — and treat Sunday afternoon as a second push rather than the first one. Late Sunday is when people check their phones between watching games, which is a real conversion window, but it should be a reinforcement, not the start.

For more on how weekly fan-vote campaigns work in general, the how-to guide covers the cadence; the full North Carolina contest index is at /usa/north-carolina/, and the national directory of high school fan polls is at /usa/.