Mustangs trample Ponies in the Corral

After beating Malta earlier in the season, the Havre High boys basketball team was out for the sweep. However, the short-handed Blue Ponies just didn’t have enough to hang with the Mustangs.

Malta, which has lost just once since the two teams met in December, suffocated Havre defensively, allowing HHS to score just 11 first-half points in a 57-42 victory Saturday night inside the HHS gymnasium. With the loss, HHS is now 3-11 on the season.

“I think when you only have three wins, there are a lot of reasons for it,” HHS head coach Curt Leeds said. “But I have to do a better job. I think we all have to. We just have to keep working and hopefully, we can find something before divisionals that will work for us.”

In the first quarter, Havre hung around and after a 3-pointer by Isaac Warp, the score was tied 6-6. However, a 7-0 run from Malta that included five points from Nate Costin, gave the Mustangs a 13-6 advantage after one.

The run continued in the second quarter, as Malta scored nine of the first 12 points in the stanza, to grab a 22-9 lead. It also capped a 16-3 run for the Mustangs, who would eventually take a 32-11 lead into intermission.

In the third quarter, Malta continued to blow the game wide open and started the second half by going on a 9-3 run that put the Mustangs in front 41-14, giving Malta its biggest lead of the game at 27 points.

The lead shrunk by the start of the fourth quarter and in the final eight minutes, Havre managed to score 19 points, thanks to a pair of triples from Warp and another from Tanner Parsons. But the Ponies never got closer than 12 points in the closing minutes and went on to lose by 15.

Costin was the top scorer for Malta in the win, finishing with 18. Ostin Welch added 12 for the Mustangs and Hunter Love had six. Warp, who made a game-high four 3-pointers, led all scorers with 19 points. Ivar Aageson, who also connected twice from deep, finished with 10 and Parsons ended up with five.

“I think that there are positives and negatives to take away from every game,” Leeds said. “I thought one of the positives was the play of some of our younger guys. And Trey Murphy, I thought he played well for it being his first start and just kind of being thrown into the fire. He probably could have been more aggressive offensively, but he did his job. Isaac also heated up in the second half offensively, we need to find that for a full game.

“Stat wise, it will say we can’t score consistently,” he added. “But my personal belief is that we can. We just need to understand when it’s our time to score. We need to play a little smarter offensively and we need to execute our offense better. If we can start executing better we can get more higher-percentage shots that are more likely to go in and there is more flow to it. It seems like we just start jacking up shots instead of getting good ones to get us back on track, so that’s what we need to look for.”

Havre has four games remaining in the regular season, with three of them coming at home. The first of those games will come Friday night against Fairfield. HHS will then travel to Lewistown Saturday.

“We have two tough games coming up,” Leeds said. “Both Lewistown and Fairfield are good teams.”

Malta 57, Havre 42

Malta 13 19 11 11 — 57

Havre 6 5 12 19 — 42

Malta — Nate Costin 18, Hunter Love 6, Jace Bishop 2, T. Jensen 5, K. Henry 1, K. Kuehn 2, B. Sjostrom 5, Ostin Welch 12, Taylor Mathews 2. Totals: 22 5-6.

Havre — Tanner Parsons 5, Jacob Irvin 4, Isaac Warp 19, Ivar Aageson 10, Trey Murphy 2, Tyson Sangrey 2. Totals: 13 9-14.

Three point goals — Costin 1, Sjostrom 1, Welch 3, Parsons 1, Warp 4, Aageson 2.