HHS girls travel to Belgrade, Livingston

For years, the Havre High girls basketball team has dominated the Central A conference. And this weekend, on the road against Belgrade and Livingston, the Blue Ponies will look to continue that trend.

After going on the road and knocking off Eastern-A foes Sidney and Laurel, Havre will look to win two more on the road, this time against Belgrade, who they will play at 6 tonight, as well as Livingston Saturday. That game will start at 2 p.m.

“I think that we have done well in conference games because we put an emphasis on them,” HHS head coach Dustin Kraske said. “Not that we don’t want to win non-conference games, we just know these are the games that affect our seeding at divisionals and that’s how we are looking at it this weekend.”

The Ponies, who have been consistently good over the past few years, seem to always have a strong senior running the show and that’s the case again this year with Naomi Terry, who averaged 17 points and shot nearly 50 percent in two games at the Eastern A Tip-off. In two games, Havre made eight 3-point shots and five of them came from Terry, who is shooting 41 percent from downtown.

In addition to Terry, the Ponies got some solid scoring from freshman Kyndall Keller, who scored 14 against Laurel and is averaging 10 points after two games. Yet as good as the Ponies are at guard, with Kaylee Nystrom and Marca Herron also in the mix, Havre will also need some good play in that paint from Danielle Wallace, who is leading the team in rebounds, to go along with a scoring average of seven per game.

While the Havre offense is scoring 44 points per game, the defense has been even better and through just games, the Ponies are surrendering just 30 points a night.

“I think we have been playing some really great defense, we have really been getting after it,” Kraske said. “And that’s good to see, we need to keep playing at a high level and getting better as a group defensively.”

Havre will play Belgrade first this weekend and even though the Panthers have zero players scoring in double figures, they are actually averaging two more points per game than Havre at 46.3. Their leading scorers are Krista Brown, Kiah Hohenstein and Gabby Weber, who all average 7.7 per game.

“I think Sarah Fowler is going a great job with Belgrade,” Kraske said. “It seems like those kids are competing a lot harder than maybe what they did last year. I was totally impressed with them. They do have a tough time scoring, but that is what it is. Our kids are going to have to be very focused on the task at hand. We have to make them play at the tempo that we want to play. It will be a good test.”

Livingston, which lost some key players from last year’s team, namely All-Conference selection Sierra Higgs, had some troubles offensively. In one loss last weekend, the Rangers scored just 20 points. So far the leading scorers have been Claree Tecca and Danielle Babcox, but this weekend, Kraske said it was hard to know what to expect.

“They had a bunch of seniors last year,” Kraske said. “And know they are playing with a bunch of younger kids, but they really struggled to score. They have moved some juniors into the lineup, but I don’t think they have had much time playing together, so they have a lot to do.”

With Havre going down as the favorite to win both games, the Ponies, if they can take care of business, could get a big jump on the conference race with a sweep, especially with four of the last six conference games coming at home.

“You have to put your mind around that these are seeding games for the last weekend of February,” Kraske said. “That’s our mindset this week. I hate to put that much emphasis on it, but we have to. It’s early, but everyone is in the early boat, so it’s going to be important for us to go down there and be focused and play well.”

Havre and Belgrade will play tonight at 6. The Ponies will then face Livingston Saturday at 2 p.m.