By John Robbins

It’s been a long time since the Butte Civic Center hosted a basketball game in the Mining City, as many of us know the famous 1923 crew has been renting the building since last year and will have it until December 2023, paying the city of Butte 75k a month, and the TV show has brought an enormous positive economic impact to the Butte community.

We love that this has benefited our little town of Butte so much, but sports fans alike are excited to flood the doors for the 2023 cross town rival showdown between the Butte Central Maroons and Butte High Bulldogs at the Butte Civic Center January 31^st, 2023.

The Civic Center is special and if you’ve played or watched an event there then you know why, I can still hear the Civic Center Psycos chanting at opposing teams on our John Thatcher coached Bulldog days, I remember the infamous Missoula Hellgate game when rubber balls were given out during the game and what erupted soon after.

There have been countless memories at the Butte Civic Center and the two schools are ready to make more of them tomorrow night as they are set to square off in a boys and girls double-header, and how could things not be exciting with one of the most prolific scores to put on a basketball uniform in Butte is set to lace them up one last time against Butte High.

The girls are up first tipping things off at 6:00 PM Sharp.

The Butte Central Lady Maroons (0-8/ 1-11) had their game this past weekend cancelled and are looking to get back in the win column against their archrival Lady Bulldogs. Brooke Badovinac keeps making history in a Maroon uniform, she eclipsed the 1000-point club earlier this season and continues to shine. Mollie Drew plays a solid post and defensive roll for the Lady Maroons and is complimented by Maycee Anderson and Arika Stajcar both can all score the basketball.

The Butte High Lady Bulldogs (0-7/1-9) are coming off a loss to the Helena Bengals this past weekend and also look to get back on the winning side of things, it should be a good matchup and fun to watch as both programs are well coached and adjusting to new rosters and losing bulks of their scoring from a season ago. While Butte High still finds their groove and look to get Senior Laura Roseleaf more involved in the offense, Butte has a great array of players who can put the ball in the bucket, Brityn Stewart, Dylann Bartoletti, and Emmarie Richards can all score they just need to put a complete game together and I think this will be a great matchup for both teams.

Second up are the boys @ 7:15 PM

The Butte Central Maroons (8-0/11-1) haven’t lost since their opener in a rematch of the State Class A title game and are on an 11-game winning streak heading into Tuesday’s matchup. This team is playing really well, and they continue to get better, I asked coach Kelly how he keeps his team motivated and to stay hungry during this win streak, “keeping this team humble and motivated hasn’t been a problem. We have played some really good teams and if we don’t play our best, we will get beat. Having the experience, we all had last March keeps them motivated to do it again.”

The Butte High Bulldogs (4-3/5-5) are no stranger to playing teams on streaks, as they did just this past Saturday defeating a Helena High team who was undefeated in conference play and did so convincingly after a huge 19-4 in the 2^nd quarter. Coach Luedtke gets these guys ready to play week in and week out, Butte High has had some really tough losses this year losing two games by 1 point in the final seconds they are definitely a team to look out for. They play hard and gritty, and they all hate losing, and have seemingly accepted freshman Hudson Luedtke as a starter and it shows on the court, they have great camaraderie that transitioned over from the football field.

This should be a very exciting game between two well coached and high-octane teams. The double-header is set to draw quite the crowd and I’m excited to see all the hoops fans pack the Butte Civic Center again. Play ball!