HHS girls ready for visits to Park, Belgrade

Chris Peterson

Havre Daily News

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The Havre High girls basketball team has spent much of the season finding an identity. And after four consecutive wins, it appears they have found one heading into the stretch run in the Central A conference.

The Blue Ponies, who are 6-4 overall and 4-0 in the Central A, have two more key games on the schedule this weekend as they look to improve to 6-0 in conference play with road wins over conference foes Livingston and Belgrade. The Ponies will take on the Rangers tonight at 7:30, followed by a showdown with Belgrade Saturday 3:30 p.m.

“The key this weekend I think in both of our games is going to be the play of our bigs,” HHS head coach Dustin Kraske said. “Danielle Wallace, Kristen Nash and Kyley Verploegen all have to come up big. They are going to need to score inside, rebound collectively and be ready to go. The whole thing is not going to hinge on them, but they are going to have to be a big part of what we do.”

Back in December, Havre rolled to back-to-back wins over Livingston and Belgrade and won each game by double figures. In the first go around with the Rangers, HHS cruised to a 73-58 victory. The Ponies then followed that up with a 62-36 trouncing of Belgrade.

Of course, those games were at the HHS gymnasium and this weekend, both games will be on the road, which should provide a more difficult challenge. While Havre is leading the conference with a 4-0 record and Browning is just a game back at 3-1, both Livingston and Belgrade are 1-3, along with Lewistown, meaning they need some wins and need them soon to avoid the play-in game at season's end to qualify for the Eastern A Divisional.

One thing that the Rangers have going for them is that outside of Havre, which has Dani Wagner and Naomi Terry, they probably have the best 1-2 punch in the Central A. Sierra Higgs, who is fourth in the conference in scoring and tenth in the state with an average of 13.4 points per game. She is joined by Meagan Gibson, who is sixth in the Central A in scoring with 9.8 per night.

“They are a very athletic team,” Kraske said. “That is one thing that always scares me about them. They want to get up and down a little bit and playing them in their gym will be a good challenge. I think they are better than their record indiciates.”

Yet, as good as those players are for Livingston, they simply don't match up with Wagner and Terry, who are not only the top two individual scorers in the Central A, but also the top scoring tandem in the state with a combined average of 32.6 points.

Through 10 games, Wagner is second in Class A girls basketball with 18.3 points per game, while Terry finds herself ranking sixth in the state with 14.3. Both players have been extremely consistent scoring for Havre. and Terry in particular has been on a hot streak lately, raising her scoring average by more than three points in her last few games.

“Dani and Naomi can put a lot of pressure on a defense,” Kraske said. “Dani plays inside and will usually have a bigger player guarding her which is a mismatch. Then she gets more of a guard on her and she can go down and post because she has the total package. Naomi is just so confident and I think she is doing an even better job than even before of getting to the basket or pulling up and shooting over people. It’s pretty neat to see.”

While the Ponies have the two best scorers in the conference, they also have three of the top rebounders in the league as Wagner ranks fourth with six per game, Nash ranks fifth with 5.8 per game and Wallace is 10th with 4.6 per game.

While the Havre girls have started to get things going offensively, things could get even better if the Ponies continue to get more contributions from Marca Herron, who scored 15 points last Friday against Browning and Ceyara Plante, who had nine points in the win over Rocky Boy.

After battling Livingston, the Ponies will head to Belgrade to close out their weekend, where they will take on the struggling Panthers. Back in December, Havre outclassed Belgrade in just about every way possible and unless something changes dramatically, it's hard to see anything different happening this time around.

However, Belgrade won't lay down for the Ponies and with both Shania Neubauer, who averages 7.6 points per game and Sky Neubauer, who is averaging 7.3 per game, the Panthers at least have a fighting chance to upset HHS. But, with the improvement of the Havre defense, which currently ranks second in the league with an average of 50.1 points against per game, it will be easier said than done.

“I think the key for Belgrade will be showing up and playing a better basketball game against them than we did at home,” Kraske said. “I don’t think that we played particularly well against them. So I think our kids are really going to have to be focused on the mindset of playing right away. Games are 32 minutes not 25.”

Havre and Livingston will face off tonight in Livingston at 7:30, followed by a 3:30 p.m., start against Belgrade Saturday.

“Our kids are coming along,” Kraske said. “They have done a nice job. They don’t get too high when they play well and don’t get down when they don’t play well. I like that and their collective development has been fun to watch.”