Havre high girls home to face arch rival Panthers, Rangers

The Havre High girls basketball team has been on a roll of late. The Blue Ponies have won four straight games and are now the fourth-ranked team in Class A. And while that all sounds good, it won’t mean as much if they can’t continue that streak against a pair of conference opponents.

Havre enters the weekend sporting a 4-0 record in the Central A conference and a 7-2 record overall. But wins tonight against Belgrade and Saturday against Livingston, would push HHS to 6-0 in conference play and put the Ponies in prime position to win the regular season title once again.

The Ponies will kick off their weekend of Central A basketball tonight against Belgrade at 5. Havre will then take on Livingston at 2 p.m. Saturday. Both games will be played inside the HHS gymnasium.

Havre won their meetings against Belgrade and Livingston handily last month on the road, beating them by the scores of 54-27 and 57-36, respectively. Beating a team twice is never easy, particularly a conference opponent, but it’s a challenge that the Ponies and head coach Dustin Kraske are more than ready for.

“Fortunately, we went down there and played very well against both Belgrade and Livingston,” Kraske said. “So our biggest challenge is going to be for our kids not to just show up and play. Belgrade has a good team and Livingston has a good team. So we need to be prepared to show up both physically and mentally ready to do the things we do to help our team be successful each week.”

A big reason for the Ponies’ success this season has been the play of Morgan Mazurkiewicz, Naomi Terry and Dani Wagner.

Mazurkiewicz currently leads the Central A in scoring with an average of 16.1 points per game, steals with 4.1 per game and assists with 5.7 per game, making her unquestionably the most productive player in the conference. She has also been deadly from the free-throw-line, shooting better than 85 percent, which is tops in the league and has helped Havre salt away numerous victories this season.

Yet, Terry and Wagner have also proven to be key contributors. Terry comes into the weekend with an average of 11.2 points per game, good enough for sixth in the Central A, while Wagner is 10th with 9.6. Wagner is also second in rebounding with 7.6 per game and seventh in steals with two per game.

“Morgan is playing really well right now,” Kraske said. “Dani is also looking to score more for us and Naomi is doing her thing. But we also have some others like Ceyara Plante and Holly Purkett that just keep getting better and better.”

Belgrade and Livingston both come into the weekend with 1-3 conference records and while neither is a real threat to challenge Havre for first place, the Ponies hold just a one-game lead over Brownin,g and with a road game looming later in the season against the second-place Indians, there is no room for error.

Belgrade will be led into action by Alexis Clingingsmith, who leads Belgrade in scoring with 11.9 points per game. Another Panther that the Ponies will need to concern themselves with is Erin Singleton, who scores 10.5 points per game. Singleton is also Belgrade’s best perimeter shooter. She has connected on 31 percent of her 3-point attempts and has as many 3-point field goals (12) as the rest of her team put together.

“Belgrade has Clingingsmith, she is very quick and she’s solid,” Kraske said. “Naomi did a great job defending Clingingsmith in Belgrade, but they also have Singleton and she’s a good player, too, and I thought Morgan did a great job on her. Plus the rest of our kids played pretty good team defense.”

After taking on Belgrade tonight, the Ponies will square off against a Livingston team that boasts just one double-digit scorer in Sierra Higgs, who is the Rangers’ leading scorer with an average of 12.2 points per game. Her game is very perimeter-oriented as she is a 32 percent shooter from beyond the arc. She has scored a total of 110 points this season, 60 of which have come off 3-pointers.

When the Rangers need to score inside, they look to Meghan Gibson and Meadow Ingram, who are each among the team leaders in both points and rebounds.

“The biggest thing for us is to just come out and do the things we have done well all season,” Kraske said. “We need to keep playing hard on defense and executing. But we are coming along and we need to just keep working and getting better.”

Havre and Belgrade will tip off tonight at 5, and Saturday the Ponies and Rangers will get things started in the afternoon at 2 p.m. Both games will be inside the HHS gymnasium.