Basketball Recap: Fort Benton Takes Down Cascade in a Playoff Battle

It's playoff time, and Fort Benton had no trouble coming through when it counted. They took down the Cascade Badgers 64-50 on Wednesday. Given the Longhorns' advantage in MaxPreps' Montana basketball rankings (they are ranked 19th, while the Badgers are ranked 61st), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

Kelton Vielleux

Field Goal Percentage

02/26/25 vs Cascade	58%
02/22/25 vs Turner	33%
02/22/25 vs North Star	31%
02/20/25 vs Chester-Joplin-Inverness	38%
02/20/25 vs Big Sandy	58%
+ 17 more games

Kelton Vielleux was his usual excellent self, shooting 6-for-10 from downtown and dropping a double-double with 28 points and 11 boards. Thanks to that strong game, he now owns an excellent 45.3% field goal percentage. Another player making a difference was Kellan Diekhans, who dropped a double-double with 15 points and ten rebounds.

Fort Benton was working as a unit and finished the game with 15 assists. They are 14-3 when they've passed the ball that well.

The win (which was Fort Benton's fourth in a row) raised their record to 16-6. Those victories came thanks in part to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 57.8 points over those games. As for Cascade, they moved to 17-2 with that defeat, which also ended their 17-game winning streak.

Fort Benton wasted no time getting back out on the court and has already played their next match, a 54-52 victory against Denton/Stanford/Geyser/Geraldine on the 28th. As for Cascade, they also didn't take long to hit the court again: they've already played their next game, a 65-31 win against Heart Butte on the 27th.