Basketball Game Preview: South Loup vs. Sandhills/Thedford Knights

South Loup will take on the Sandhills/Thedford Knights on Thursday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (South Loup has six straight victories, Sandhills/Thedford has four straight losses), but none of that matters once you're on the court.

If South Loup beats Sandhills/Thedford with 48 points on Thursday, it's going to be the team's new lucky number: they've won their past two matches with that exact score. South Loup rang in the new year with a 48-40 win over Hershey on Tuesday. Given South Loup's advantage in MaxPreps' Nebraska basketball rankings (they are ranked 103rd, while Hershey is ranked 224th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

Meanwhile, Sandhills/Thedford opened the new year with a less-than-successful 56-44 defeat to Overton.

South Loup pushed their record up to 6-2 with the victory, which was their fifth straight on the road. The wins came thanks to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 60.2 points per game. As for Sandhills/Thedford, their loss dropped their record down to 2-5.

South Loup came up short against Sandhills/Thedford when the teams last played back in January of 2024, falling 51-39. Thankfully for South Loup, Brady Dahlberg (who dropped a double-double on 20 points and 11 boards) won't be suiting up this time. Will that be enough to change the final result? There's only one way to find out.