New Year: Blue Pony girls return to take on Rocky Boy tonight

The high school basketball season in Montana always includes a couple of weeks off during the holidays and during that time, the Havre High basketball team got better according to head coach Dustin Kraske, which should be a scary thought for everyone else.

"We had a great couple weeks of practice," Kraske said. "In our first couple of games, we played pretty well but not everybody did, so we want everyone to get to their top level in performance and get uncomfortable in practice and then demonstrate what they have learned in games."

Havre (6-0) will get a chance to demonstrate how much it has improved since its last game against CMR tonight when the Ponies will host Rocky Boy in the renewal of their annual rivalry. Tip-off time is set for 5:30 inside the HHS gymnasium.

"It's a chance for us to go out and get better," Kraske said. "We have put in some wrinkles over Christmas break and trying to work a little harder and try to get that into a game. We have some new things we are working on, some new defenses and we want to evaluate that a little bit."

The Ponies have started the season by continuing their winning ways from a year ago, however, Rocky Boy, following the graduation of three key starters, has struggled this season, dropping three of its first four games. Sasha Coffee will lead the way for the Morning Stars, who will be looking to pull the upset.

In order to avoid that against their Class B rival, the Ponies will turn to their deep and talented lineup of players, highlighted by two-time All-State performer Kyndall Keller, who is one of the top scorers in Class A girls basketball. The Ponies will also rely heavily on Kadia Miller, Kylie Walker, Loy Waid and Katie Wirtzberger. HHS has also gotten key contributions off the bench from freshman guard Sadie Filius, who scored a team-high 16 points in the win over CMR and Jessa Chvilicek, who scored 10 as a non-starter in the same outing.

While Rocky Boy will come to Havre Thursday for a non-conference tilt, the Ponies will also hit the road this weekend as they travel to Lewistown with a chance to get to 3-0 in the Central A conference. The matchup between the Eagles and Ponies will get underway at 5 p.m. Saturday.

"Lewistown has Anna Zimmer back and she's a nice player," Kraske said. "They have some other players back and for us to go win on the road is going to be important if you want to win the league, which I know is one of our goals. So we are looking forward to going down there and seeing how we can perform on the road."

The Eagles will start the week at 1-5 overall. Lewistown is 0-1 within the Central A and 0-5 against Class A teams overall. The only win so far this season came against Huntley Project and one of the biggest issues for the Eagles has been an offense that has struggled to score. Lewistown is scoring just 33 points per game and from the field, the Eagles are shooting 23 percent on 2-pointers and 29 percent from 3-point range.

Zimmer leads the way for the Eagles with an average of 8.2 points and seven rebounds. Kayla Nelson also averages 4.5 points and five rebounds, while Macy Mangold also scores 4.5 per game. If the Ponies are able to secure the win, they would improve to 3-0 in the Central A, with wins over each conference opponent on the road.

Havre opens its weekend tonight against Rocky Boy at 5:30 p.m. and heads to Lewistown Saturday for a 5 p.m. tip-off.