Streaking Ponies host Eagles Saturday

It's been quite some time since the Havre High boys basketball team won the Central A regular season title. But, with a win over Lewistown this weekend, the Blue Ponies will be in prime position to make a run at doing just that.

The second-ranked Ponies are slated for two games this weekend, starting tonight when they travel to take on the Conrad Cowboys of Class B in non-conference action. That game gets underway at 7. Havre will return to the HHS gymnasium, where Central A rival Lewistown will come calling Saturday night. Tip-off in that matchup will be at 5 p.m.

"Our goal is to keep getting better and keep improving," HHS head coach Curt Leeds said. "But if we can get to 3-0 in the conference that will put us in a really good position going into the rest of the season, and I think it would give our boys a lot of confidence."

The Ponies, who opened the season 4-0 suffered their first loss of the year to Great Falls High last Friday before rebounding to beat Malta last Saturday. Now at 5-1 overall and 2-0 in the Central A, HHS will be looking to start another win streak tonight.

The Cowboys, who come into the game 3-3, have been playing their best basketball of the season recently and are hoping to win their fourth straight game after knocking off Cut Bank 64-35 and Fort Benton 63-14 last weekend.

Conrad, which won just five games a season ago, is much improved thanks to a veteran team that returns four starters in Shane Larson, Blake Underdahl, Tristen Diedrich and Clark Judisch.

"(Conrad) has a couple good scorers in Shane Larson and Clark Judisch," Leeds said. "(Conrad) runs a really good cutting offense. The big thing for us will be just keeping people in front of us and making them shoot from the outside. We just need to make sure that we control tempo and that we get good shots offensively.

"Another thing we want to do in both games this weekend is come out and play a little better defensively," Leeds said. "We just need to make sure that some of the other teams' best shooters don't get open shots and just doing a little better job of getting into our rotations."

Additionally, it will be important to get the ball in the hands of junior Dane Warp, who leads Havre with an average of 23.3 points per game. Warp accounts for 41.2 percent of Havre's offense and while his play has been spectacular this season, HHS needs some others to step up. That way it will be harder for teams to take away Warp like GFH, when the Bison held him without a field goal in the second half thanks in part to a box-and-one defense.

"I think that is something we are going to see more regularly," Leeds said. "But it's going to create open shots for other guys, we just need to knock them down. But I know we have some guys that will step up like Michael Bakke, Nate Rismon, Jerod Boles and Jase Kato. If those guys aren't scoring we have Jacob LaBrie, who has come in and scored. So we have always had that person ready to step up and always had that balance."

Bakke is currently the Ponies' second-leading scorer with an average of 9.3 points a game to go along with a team-high nine rebounds per game. Rismon is another threat, as he averages 8.3 points per game and is particularly dangerous from 3-point range, where he is shooting a team-best 38 percent.

The Conrad game will be Havre's fifth-consecutive game on the road. But, that stretch will end Saturday night when the Ponies return home to face Lewistown.

The Eagles, who come into the Saturday's contest against Havre 1-4 overall and 0-1 in the Central A, have lost back-to-back games to Belgrade and Laurel by 21 and 27 points, respectively. However, Lewistown does return three starters from a team that won five games a season ago. Morgan Ray, James Derheim and Jessey Perry all look to play essential roles for the Eagles, who will be looking to spring an upset over the Ponies.

"It would be nice to beat Lewistown because it would really solidify us as the No. 1 team in the conference," Leeds said. "Lewistown is not the biggest team, but they have a lot of athleticism. They seem to be struggling a bit to score, so we need to make sure we aren't the team that gives up a lot of points to them."

The Ponies and the Cowboys will go head-to-head tonight at 7 in Conrad. Saturday, Havre and Lewistown will tip-off at 5 p.m at the HHS gymnasium.