SPORTS

Lewistown boys, Livingston girls win

Steve Schreck
sschreck@greatfallstribune.com

Morgan Ray willed that ball to the bottom of the hoop.

“You know what, that’s exactly what happened,” Lewistown head coach Jeff Elliott said. “Morgan put in a ton of time during the offseason, and he has really made himself a great player. And we knew down the stretch, we wanted Morgan to have the ball.”

Tied at 42 and 15 seconds on the game clock, Lewistown went to guy everyone in the gym knew was going to get the ball.

“It was our basic up formation,” Ray said. “It’s designed so that we can run it either way. At the end of a game, we always have it so that if we need to take somebody one-on-one (we can). And that’s exactly what we did. We’ve been practicing for it and finally had a time to use it.”

The 5-foot-10 senior bulled his way into the lane, and with three defenders draped all over him, he found a sliver of space and banked in the game-winning basket with five seconds left as Lewistown edged Livingston 44-42 in first-round action of the Central A Divisional boys’ basketball tournament at CMR Fieldhouse late Thursday night.

“To me, I saw a little bit of a lane,” said Ray, who scored a game-high 17 and had 10 boards. “That’s enough hope and coach had the courage to put it in my hands, so I did what he told me to do. I took it, didn’t have a lot of room, gave a little pump fake and sent up a prayer, I guess.”

After getting control of the ball in Lewistown’s side of the court, Livingston had a chance to tie or take the lead, but a dribble-handoff was fumbled at the top of the key, and the Rangers failed to get a shot off as time expired.

Hunter Errecart, who nailed a critical corner triple to tie the game at 42 with 55 seconds left, added 12 points. That shot gave Ray a chance to muscle his way into the paint and score the winning hoop in the final seconds.

“That was big,” Elliott said of Errecart’s shot. “Real big.”

The Golden Eagles now advance to a semifinal game against Belgrade on Friday night at 8.

“It’s a huge weight off our shoulders,” Ray said. “We knew that we could beat this first team. It’s going to be a snowball effect. We are going to keep on rolling. We know we can beat Belgrade. It’ll be a tough game, but we didn’t play our best game tonight … We are making it to state, that’s all I know.”

Ladan Ricketts scored a team-high 13 points for Livingston, while Jordan Lehrer added 11 for a Rangers team that now finds itself in the loser-out bracket. The Rangers will face the loser of Friday afternoon’s game between Browning-Havre on Saturday morning at 11.

“Livingston is huge, and their big kids are good,” Elliott said. “Ladan Ricketts is one of the best shooters you are going to find. I thought Hunter Errecart did a great job on him tonight. But for us, we have to be able to knock down shots … We defended and we rebounded pretty well.”

Livingston 43, Belgrade 34 (girls)

It’s hard to win consistently when you don’t have a consistent leader.

That’s been the case for the Livingston Lady Rangers girls’ basketball team in recent seasons.

“The seniors have had most of the coaching changes,” junior Sierra Higgs said. “ … We’ve struggled a lot, but I think this year it was definitely a change for the better. We are just playing more like a team with this coach.”

The coach is Scott Coleman, who is in his first year. In fact, the entire coaching staff is made up of rookies. The group of Lady Ranger seniors has gone through three different coaching changes during its time in school.

You wouldn’t know it watching Thursday, however, as Livingston notched a 43-34 win over Belgrade in a first-round game of the Central A Divisional tournament before several hundred fans at CMR Fieldhouse.

“My girls played as a team,” Coleman said. “Very hard-nosed, man-to-man defense. And we were smart with the ball. They took the opportunities that were there.”

Said Higgs: “We definitely played as a team and kept the ball moving. We just beat them on intensity and played really good defense.”

The Lady Rangers, which, Coleman thinks, haven’t made the state tournament for seven or eight years, split the regular season series with Belgrade, a very intense rival of Livingston, the head coach said.

“The girls know each other well,” he explained. “They are friends off the court.”

Higgs led the way for the Lady Rangers with 11 points.

Livingston made 7-of-12 3-pointers on the night — Belgrade didn’t make a single triple — and will face Havre, the Class A defending champions, Friday at 6:30 in a semifinal matchup. The Blue Ponies have beaten the Lady Rangers twice in as many tries this season.

“Havre presents a challenge for everybody,” Coleman said. “ … They have some prime-time players that absolutely deliver when the opportunity is there.”

Megan Schoenen added nine points for Livingston, Hailey Peterson had seven and Meghan Gibson chipped in six.

“It’s huge,” Coleman said of the win. “I have a group of seniors that have worked very hard and haven’t seen a lot of success.”

Erin Singleton scored a game-high 13 points for the Panthers. Belgrade falls into the loser-out bracket and will play the loser of Browning and Fergus Saturday at 9:30 a.m.