HHS girls host M-Ettes Saturday

The Havre High girls basketball team has been busy lately, but this week, the Blue Ponies will get a rest of sorts, with only one game on the schedule.

That game will come Saturday when the Ponies host Malta. Havre will be looking to complete the season sweep at beating the M-Ettes earlier in the season. Tip-off is set for 5 p.m.

In the first meeting between the two teams, Havre started out slow, but turned it on in the second half to blow out Malta by the score of 59-38. However, since that game, the two teams have gone in dramatically different directions. The Ponies still haven’t lost and will enter this weekend 12-0, while the M-Ettes haven’t won and will bring a 1-11 record into their game Friday night against Wolf Point, which precedes the game with HHS.

“Right now we are just trying to stay focused on getting better,” HHS head coach Dustin Kraske said. “Our young kids especially seem to be really growing up, especially on the defensive end. So that’s been really encouraging to see.”

In the first meeting between Havre and Malta, Kyndall Keller was a driving force behind the win as she scored 14 points along with Marca Herron. Yet, the Ponies have been playing without Keller for the past few games and, thanks in large part to their depth and senior leadership, they really haven’t skipped a beat. Havre is 3-0 without Keller, with wins over Browning, Livingston and Belgrade, but the plan is for the All-State sophomore to play against Malta, albeit in limited minutes.

“She will play,” Kraske said. “But she will be limited.”

Getting Keller back is good news for the Ponies, but not for their opponents. Havre was 3-0 without Keller and won three games on the road, which is an impressive feat, no matter the competition. HHS also won two of the three games by double digits, with the exception of Browning, ranked fourth at the time, which fell to Havre 57-50. Yet as good as the top-ranked Ponies were minus Keller, with her and with the team at full strength, HHS has been beating teams by an average of 30.

“We have really had that next-man-up mentality,” Kraske said. “Our kids have really stepped up and worked together to fill that void. It hasn’t just been one or two players, it has been the entire team.”

The biggest key for Havre this season, with or without Keller has been their outstanding play on the defensive end of the floor. The Ponies have allowed just three teams to score more than 40 points in 12 games this season and only Browning reached 50. Keller is still leading the team in scoring at 18.7 points per game, but others such as Herron, Danielle Wallace and Kaylee Nystrom helped pick up the slack when she was out of the lineup.

Wallace is the second leading scorer for the Ponies, with an average of 10.2 points. She also leads the team in rebounds with 6.2 per game. Herron has also been a reliable producer on offense for Havre. She is averaging 7.8 points a game and is shooting 44 percent from 3-point range, second only to Keller, who is shooting 52 percent from deep. Nystrom has also bumped up her scoring average to 7.1 ppg. She is also tied for third on the team in rebounds with 4.4, while also leading the team in steals and assists with four per game in each category.

Havre and Malta will go head-to-head Saturday at 5:30 p.m.