HELENA — With all sports, there’s always a desire to unseat the reigning champion. For the back-to-back Class AA girls basketball state champion Helena High Bengals, they’re simply just trying to follow a phrase as old as time: Take it one day at a time.
“We have to do a lot before March. We have to worry about our non-conference schedule first and break up the season into mini-seasons. We have our non-conference schedule and then our conference schedule and then it’s tournament time,” said Bengals head coach Eric Peterson. “That’s kind of the approach we take and you know right away with these non-conference games, we’re trying to focus on ourselves and then as conference gets closer, do a little bit more with the scouting reports for our girls and things like that. But, you know, it’s that old adage, one game at a time.”
The philosophy sprawls in the program from top to bottom, as it’s not just Peterson who believes that the ability to not get ahead of themselves is something to for the Bengals to exercise.
“I think taking it one day at time is the most important thing. We can’t get ahead of ourselves, because that’s when we find trouble,” said senior Jamie Pickens. “Every team is here to win and they don’t care about our two state championships. They’re here to compete with us and we have to compete with them.”
The Bengals will look forward to Friday when they take on the Bozeman Hawks at Helena High School at 7:30 p.m.
