LAVINA — First Interstate Arena plays host to the 2023 State C basketball tournaments, where the Broadview-Lavina boys are hoping to make their first appearance since 2015.
It's a lofty goal for a team motivated by last season's shortcomings, falling in the Southern C divisional tournament.
"It's motivated us to put in the work and focus on week by week, game by game and practice by practice," senior Kade Erickson said. "The last three years we've come short and we're just looking forward to making up for that and hopefully having a better season this year."
"Project 32 and our whole objective is to figure out how to play 32 minutes of basketball," head coach Scott Severance said. "You can't have million dollar dreams and a 10-cent work ethic. We've got to make sure we're working ourselves step by step by step towards any goal that we want to realize."
Searching for 32 minutes of perfection is what has continued to drive the Pirates over the past few campaigns. They have the weapons to be one of the most potent offenses in the state, and the introduction of the shot clock seemingly plays right into their hands, as they can also play lockdown defense. Severance is taking a 'first seven, last seven' approach offensively with the stable of athletes at his disposal.
"I think we have the ability to defend and rebound, which gives us the opportunity to run, but if we don't get anything off of transition we want to basically execute offense and get a really good, wide open shot through good execution of that middle 23, 24 seconds," Severance said.
Erickson will be the featured scorer for Broadview-Lavina yet again as he continues his ascent up the school’s all-time scoring list. But it’s the growth outside of the Pirates’ big three that could determine how deep they go.
“It just comes with the team accomplishments. I want to do the best I can, but I don't go into every game just completely focused on my points. The ultimate goal is winning each game and that's my plan," Erickson said.
"We want to be six to eight people deep to play the way we want to play," Severance said. "That makes basketball a lot of fun when you have a lot of guys going in and out and they're all doing their jobs. But we're a ways away from being able to do that at the level that we want to be able to do it."
The Pirates open up their season this weekend with their annual tipoff tournament at home against Ekalaka and Broadus.
