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9C Boys: Box Elder will be tough to beat

Top-ranked Bears headline what should be an exciting week in Havre

For the next four days the Havre High gymnasium will be home to more than just the Class A Blue Ponies. With district tournaments taking place all over the state this week, Havre will once again host 9C basketball action.

Wednesday marks the start of the 2014 District 9C boys basketball tournament. The action wil run through Saturday night’s championship game.

Box Elder enters the tournament as the No. 1 seed and with an unblemished 18-0 record. The Bears went 10-0 in the 9C this year and have been the favorite to win the 9C since they won the title last year in triple overtime against Big Sandy. The Chinook Sugarbeeters will enter as the No. 2 seed (11-7), the Hays-Lodge Pole Thunderbirds will enter as the No. 3 seed (13-5), the North Star Knights will enter as the No. 4 seed (5-13), and the Turner Tornadoes will enter as the No. 5 seed (5-13) and the Big Sandy Pioneers will enter as the No. 6 seed (0-10).

With the top seed, the Bears also earn a first round bye, making their first game Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in the semifinals. The Knights and Tornadoes will face off in the first round Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. for a shot at the Bears Thursday. Chinook got second place by tiebreaker points and also earned a first-round bye. The Beeters will play Thursday at 8 p.m., facing the winner of the matchup between the Thunderbirds and Pioneers, that matchup taking place at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.

The championship game will be Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The consolation game will be Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

“I predicted Box Elder would be the team to beat,” Chinook head coach Mike Seymour said. “And obviously they are up there at the top. They are so deep they can run nine or 10 guys at you and not lose a thing, they have great shooters, they press you the entire game, and they are right there where everybody predicted them to be.”

It will take something either miraculous or catastrophic, depending on how you look at it, for the Bears not to run away with the 9C title. The Bears dominated the competition this season, led mostly by one of the more potent offenses in the state. The Bears surpassed 90 points on several occasions this year, but also had a game against the Tornadoes where the offense hit the century mark in a 104-37 win. Randall Gardipee is the leader of the Bears’ offense, but if a team can stop him, they will have Brandon The Boy, Clayton Morsette Jr., Jerrod Four Colors, Thomas Parisian, Lonnie Plain Bull Jr. and Chris LaMere to deal with.

But the Beeters have some scorers of their own that the opposition will have to deal with. Where they don’t match up with the Bears is more in their lack of depth. And with the run and gun style of coach Jeremy McDonald’s Bears, the rest of the 9C field could very well struggle to keep pace.

Lane Seymour and Zach Molyneaux have led the Beeters this season and give Chinook the ability to score from all over the floor.

HLP also wants to get into the title game, and odds are, the Thunderbirds and Beeters will be the ones standing in each other’s way. Both teams have battled all season long for second place and it came right down to the wire with a tiebreaker. Tyson Shambo, Nate Doney, Sterling White Cow and Frank Runs Above pace the Thunderbirds offensively.

“Hays-Lodge Pole and Chinook are neck and neck,” coach McDonald said. “They played two very competitive games against each other. Hays won by three at their own gym and Chinook won by eight at their gym. They have been within a couple of possessions of each other this season, and if you throw in North Star, I think all three of those teams can be dangerous.”

The Knights will need to be at their very best if they are to contend this week. Cooper Spicher and Gavin and Quinn Spinler are the leading scorers, but Sam Ulmen and Jaxon Simonson give North Star size in the post. Turner is in the same boat with their offensive attack, needing big games from nearly the whole team, not just Dylan Welsh, Bret VanValkenburg and Lucas Reed.

And it is hard to count out a team before a single tournament game has been played, but the Pioneers will have a tough weekend. With a new head coach and the smallest and most inexperienced roster in the district, the Pioneers have struggled this year. With almost no varsity experience before this year, players like Cody Bailey, T.J. Shipp and Levi Edwards will try to carry the load for a Big Sandy program which played in the Class A state semifinals a year ago.

“This will be fun,” coach McDonald said. “You never know what can happen in tournament basketball, especially in the Class C. There are over 100 schools all over the state, and there is some long history. Teams that have great regular seasons can have a bad game in a tournament and lose out on their chance to do something special. That is why you have to be ready to play every night.”

“You always want to have a wrinkle or two that will hopefully surprise a team for a quarter or two,” Seymour said. “Something that can take them out of their game plan. It is important to have those wrinkles if you need them.”

The 2014 District 9C boys tournament gets started at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. There are tow first-round games Wednesday, two semifinal games Thursday and two loser-out games Friday.

The tourney will conclude with Saturday night’s championship game. The top two teams from the 9C advance to next week’s Northern C Divisional in Great Falls.

 

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