The Havre Blue Pony boys’ basketball team finished the 2023-24 regular season with a (13-4) overall record and (7-1) in conference play to take the regular season title in the Northeastern ‘A’. New Media Broadcasters chatted with coach WaLynn Burgess and he said the first hurdle is cleared and it’s on to postseason basketball.
“I feel like we’ve been playing pretty good basketball here coming down the stretch,” Burgess said. “Winning conference titles are always first on your checklist. It means you’re taking care of business against your conference foes.”
“It sets yourself up to be in a good position for the divisional tournament that we’re coming in for right now,” Burgess continued. “We’ll take (7-1). We’ll be happy with it. We’ll get ready to move on to the next task at hand right now.”
The attention turns to Billings and MetraPark Arena, the largest basketball venue in the state of Montana. The No. 1 seeded Ponies will go there and open up play against East Helena, a team they defeated back on Dec. 8., (82-48). Burgess overlooked that and instead focused on the future and the bigger picture of playing with the right mentality.
“We like the fact that we get to test ourselves this weekend and see where we’re at,” Burgess said. “Just being down at the Metra is a whole different experience. Even if you’ve been there before, it’s still one of those ones that takes you a few minutes to get used to being underneath the big lights like that.”
“We have to go in with a mindset that we have to win two (games), regardless of where it’s at. If it’s Thursday (and) Friday (or) if it’s Thursday (and) Saturday. It doesn’t matter. If you win two games, you still get two more weeks of basketball and that’s our whole focus since we left the gym on Friday against Glendive; two more.”
Listen to the opening round game of boys’ Eastern ‘A’ divisional action in Billings as the Havre Blue Ponies face the East Helena Vigilantes on Thursday afternoon. Tip-off time is scheduled for around 3:30pm and you can listen to the game on KOJM-610AM and HiLineToday.com.
