Wildcats Focused As They Head to the Montana Class B State Tournament

The Harlem Wildcats are finally headed back to the Montana Class B Boys State Basketball tournament. After just missing out the previous two seasons the Wildcats punched their ticket to this year's tournament with a thrilling 82-79 win over the Rocky Boy Stars in the semifinal of the Northern B Divisional two weeks ago. The Wildcats finished second at the Northern B and will face the Eureka Lions, the No. 2 Seed out of the Western B at 8:00 p.m. Thursday night.

The Montana Class B Boys State Basketball tournament is being played in conjunction with the Montana Class B Girls State Basketball tournament at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. The tournament gets underway Thursday morning and concludes Saturday night with the boys and girls state championship games.

The Eureka Lions are a surprise of sorts, coming into the tournament with a sub .500 record at 10-13. Tournament time resets everything though as we all know and everyone starts even at 0-0. A win Thursday will send the Wildcats into a semifinal contest against the winner of the Shelby Coyote versus Lodge Grass quarterfinal contest. A loss would have them playing a loser out contest Friday morning against the loser of the other quarterfinal match.

The last time the Wildcats played in the state tournament was back in 2007. That year they entered the tournament as the No. 2 Seed out of the North and defeated Seeley Swan 56-39 to advance to the semifinal contest. The Wildcats fell to eventual State Champion Huntley Project 55-49 and finished fourth.

The Wildcats last won the Class B State title back in 2002 when they defeated the Wolf Point Wolves 69-67 in what some still say was one of the best high school basketball games they ever saw.

Head Coach Geno LeValdo goes back to the conclusion of the 2020-21 season in reflecting on his team's preparation for a deep post season run this year. The 2020-21 season left a bitter taste with the Head Coach as well as the returning players, "Well, coming of a third place Divisional tourney run and again missing state by inches. We lost to Fairfield the year before by two points I believe in Malta, so twice all together we came up just short," stated LeValdo.

Despite just missing out on a state tournament berth, the Wildcats and Coach LeValdo had high expectations for the 2021-22 season, "We all expected to take right off. We scheduled a good summer of High School tournaments, so we would be grinding again and playing some good competition, but mid way through Tyler (Cichosz) ripped his ACL completely out, so that was a major blow and we all know that is a major injury and is hard to completely come back to a 100%."

The injury to a major contributor like Cichosz, a senior starter, meant the team wouldn't be at full strength to start the season, "Tyler was only 60%, if that, to begin the season. Then we lost Teagan (LeValdo) and RJ (Ramone) to Covid and we ended up dropping our first game. The next weekend we got RJ and Teagan back, played awesome and then Daniel broke his hand," said LeValdo as he explained the road blocks the team faced early on.

Heading into the holiday break the team was still fighting the injury bug, "Tyler tweaked his injured knee and so we were in tough shape to say the least. We ended up dropping our next four games, I believe ,and had a record of 1-4, so yeah our dream season was completely the opposite. " LeValdo and his team kept their eye on the big picture, "We stayed focused and knew that once we were all healthy again, we would come together and be a tough team to beat. But for sure we hated that taste of losing, we hadn't had a good dose of that since the seniors were freshman."

A lot of reinforcement and direction came in the gym when it was just the coach and the team, "I kept reminding them of that in practice, to push them even more. It also made our bench solid because they had to step in early and fill the spots and so it was all slowly coming together," said LeValdo.

LeValdo knew more work had to be done and he knew where to start, "We decided we needed Tyler to get that knee stronger, so the coaches and I decided we need to separate him and focus on that knee. Tyler and Coach Ben (Carrywater) would do knee strengthening exercises for half or 3/4 practice and then he would join practice after that. We limited him also on what he can do," added LeValdo.

The Wildcats soon got a huge boost to their roster, LeValdo stated, "So as the season went on we acquired (junior) Caleb Cole the son Chris Cole, the MVP of the Wildcats 2002 State Championship team. It's only right he plays for Harlem." Things certainly seemed to be headed in the right direction for the Harlem boys, but some lingering issues still affected the team, "So everything was still falling into place, Dan (Lawrence) had to miss 4-6 games due to a break in his hand suffered in the Lodge Grass game. He still practiced everyday and worked on his skill with his cast on. It was a valuable time for our bench to get experience."

The team was getting healed up as the season went along and LeValdo knew their time was coming, "Every week I would remind them that we are almost there as a full team and we are going to break soon we could do what we wanted to do at the beginning of the season, and sure enough we gradually started to get healthy. Dan was back and Tyler was stronger but his quickness was still coming along with his lift on his shots so we knew he'd dial in soon and sure enough."

With the season winding down everyone else got to see what they could really do, "Towards the end of the season we started to gel and we saw flashes of what we could do, things we could do different," stated LeValdo. "As the District Tourney came around we were finding our stride, we took care of business at Districts and we rolled into Divisionals."

LeValdo was impressed with his team to start the Northern B Divisional, "Our first opponent was Conrad and we pushed the ball hard and got them frustrated with our tough defense. The next game we played was against Rocky Boy and they beat us by 30 early in the season and then again by 12 at the Galaxy Dome."

LeValdo took the time to make sure his team was focused on the task at hand, "We gathered to break after our run through of our offense and defense. We talked about our journey from when they were just little, 3rd through 8th grade, when Myron Hoops had them as the HI-Line Outlaws and how all these tournaments and traveling and grinding were for this moment. The timing for us was the opportunity to make not just the championship game, but to punch our ticket to State. It has been 15 years since the Wildcats made state. As I looked at them in the eyes, especially my seniors I knew they were ready to rock."

The Wildcats came out firing and built a big lead before hanging on to win a nail biter, "It was a very close game and our defense shined and Rocky Boy couldn't get a shot off as time wound down and ended up turning it over. Finally the heartbreak of barely missing State twice and feeling and seeing it on the boys faces, finally a state tournament berth became a reality. All the work these boys put in since they were little and all the summers of grinding came to this moment, we did it, we finally did it. To be considered one of the top eight Class B boys team is awesome, but we are not finished. Their dream of making it also included winning the whole thing and becoming State Champs," explained LeValdo. "We are not done, and if we play like we've been playing you're going to see some exciting basketball and get to watch how relentless and forgiving these boys play. Every team is 0-0 and they wouldn't be there if they weren't the best, so every team is dangerous and we certainly won't overlook any one."