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Lewistown rolls past Pony girls

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For the second time this season, the Havre High girls basketball team suffered a sweep at the hands of CMR and Lewistown as the Ponies fell to archrival Lewistown Eagles, 56-31, in Lewistown on Saturday night.

After a tough loss to CMR on Tuesday, Havre faced another test playing the Eagles on their home court.

Lewistown started the contest off with a close 17-13 lead after one quarter of play. The Ponies managed to keep the game tight going into halftime as they were only outscored 10-7 in the second period, giving Lewistown a 27-20 halftime lead.

In the third period, the Eagles used a 21-5 run and hot three-point shooting to pull away from Havre. The Ponies could not make a run of any kind in the final eight minutes. They scored just five points in the third quarter and just six more in the fourth. Overall, the Eagles outscored Havre 29-11 in the final 16 minutes of the contest.

Despite the final score, Havre head coach Dennis Murphy was pleased with his team's start to the game.

"I was really happy with the way we played in the first minutes of the game," Murphy said. "We were defending really well and we had the lead at 9-7, but they got a couple of offensive rebounds and I think for some reason we got tired after the first five minutes. But I liked our approach to the game."

But his squad's struggles offensively were key, along with Lewistown's torrid shooting.

"We're a team that right now is struggling to score, which makes it very difficult on us against a team like Lewistown," Murphy said. "They are a very good shooting team. On top of that, Lesly Richter just had career nights against us both times we played them. We just could not defend her."

Lewistown got a game-high 17 points from Richter and also some hot shooting from Brenda Bassett, who scored nine of her 10 points from behind the three-point line. Bassett also hurt the Ponies in Havre in December when she hit four treys in that contest. As a team, the Eagles drilled six three-pointers in the contest.

Meanwhile, the Ponies got 10 points from freshman Steph Flatau and nine from sister Carrie Flatau in the loss. The Ponies hit just 12 field goals in the game and were five of six from the foul line. The Eagles went 10-15 from the charity stripe en route to the victory.

The win pushes the Eagles' record to 10-4 and places them in fourth place in the Central A Conference standings. Meanwhile, the Ponies fell to 6-8 on the season and are in sixth place in the Central A race.

The Ponies will travel to Browning on Friday night and return home to host the District 2B Malta M-Ettes on Saturday night at the Havre High gymnasium.

 

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