Rustlers slip by Blue Ponies in the Corral

The Havre High girls basketball team seemed to have Tuesday night’s game against CMR under control, until its offense went cold, causing the Blue Ponies to suffer their first home loss of the season.

With just 11 points in the second half and only four in the fourth quarter, Havre surrendered a three-point halftime lead, as the CMR Rustlers captured the 48-39 win inside the HHS gymnasium.

“We played basketball too selfishly to be successful,” HHS head coach Dustin Kraske said. “Looking back at tonight, my guess is we were limited in assists and shooting. It was all players on our team creating things.

"I like their aggressiveness, but play the game together," he continued. "You look at our defensive effort tonight — zero communication. Hustle was okay, rebounding was okay. We don’t speak to each other defensively and if these youngsters want to be a championship type team, which I think they possess within them, togetherness is the only way they are going to do that.”

In the opening stanza, Havre jumped out to a six-point lead as Kyndall Keller hit two 3-pointers and scored a total of 10 points to give HHS a 16-10 edge after one.

In the second quarter, Keller stayed hot, twice hitting from deep to keep the Havre advantage at six. At the half, the freshman had 16 points and the Ponies led 28-25.

Ceyara Plante buried a three early in the third quarter to put Havre up four, at 31-27. Yet, an 11-4 run to end the period for the Rustlers put them in front 38-35 with eight minutes remaining.

Neither team scored for nearly five minutes in the fourth quarter, but finally, Marca Herron broke the drought, scoring a layup to get the Ponies within one at 38-37 with 3:05 to play. However, two free throws and a layup from Tristin Achenbach put the Rustlers up five at 42-37 and CMR wouldn’t look back. Havre scored just once more in the game and made just two field goals in the last 11:52, as CMR connected on some free throws in the final minute to ice the nine-point win.

Keller was the game’s high scorer with 20 points. Plante also pitched in with nine for HHS. Achenbach led the Rustlers with 17 points, while Addison Gardner contributed with 12.

“I think this will be a good learning experience for us, I hope,” Kraske said. “We will either learn from it and improve and move forward or we will be in a bit of a stalemate for a while, which I hope isn’t the case. The next two basketball games are against quality teams that are going to expose things that teams do not do well. It’s a little bit frustrating. But credit to CMR. They are playing well right now, we just didn’t play basketball the way we expect. So we will go back to work and try to do a better job.”

The loss was just the second of the season for the Ponies, who are now 10-2 overall and still 6-0 in the Central A conference. CMR improved to 7-4 on the season.

The Ponies will look to rebound from their loss Saturday, when they will host Malta, the defending Class B state champions inside the HHS gymnasium.

CMR 48, Havre 39

CMR 10 15 13 11 – 48

Havre 16 12 7 4 – 39

CMR – Maddy Shawkinski 7, Tristin Achenbach 17, Sam Payne 3, Kayci Edwards 2, Addison Gardner 12, Kyra Willis 8. Totals: 13 21-30.

Havre – Ceyara Plante 9, Naomi Terry 2, Kyndall Keller 20, Kaylee Nystrom 2, Marca Herron 2, Danielle Wallace 2, Kyley Verploegen 2. Totals: 16 2-5.

Fouls: Havre 19, CMR 9. Fouled out - Nystrom. 3-pointers: Havre 5 (Keller 4, Plante); CMR 2 (Gardner 2).