The Havre girls’ basketball team is coming into a unique situation to begin the start of the new year. The Lady Blue Ponies will play three games in three nights, which is uncommon for the high school basketball regular season. Ponies coach Dustin Kraske told New Media Broadcasters that the team is preparing for the time as if it is late February and early March when the divisional and state tournaments take place.
“We’re working as if it’s a tournament week,” Kraske said. “Our prep work still so early in the course of this season has to do with us fundamentally. We’re embracing it as getting better (and) being mentally prepared.”
“We’re going to be on the road three straight games. and we’ll find out where our mental preparedness is for the first week of January,” Kraske continued.
Havre will embark on the first of its three games on Thursday when the team is set to face Malta in their gym. The game was supposed to be played back on Dec. 12, but a scheduling conflict came up and the girls’ game got moved to Jan. 4. Kraske said that the past matchups with the Class ‘B’ M-Ettes was instrumental in how the team will play against the opponent.
“We’ve been playing Malta my whole career,” Kraske said. “Nate Hammond, (Malta’s) coach, (is) a good friend of mine and he’s a very good basketball coach.”
“Our prep work is going to revolve around some concepts that they traditionally do well,” Kraske continued. “On tape, they still do (those concepts) well, so it will be just more concepts to playing against them.”
The Lady Ponies and M-Ettes will tip off around 5pm on Thursday. The game can be heard exclusively on KOJM-610AM and HiLineToday.com with Noah Friedman calling the action.
