Will these teams ever lose again?

One of the bummers – and there are very few – about working for a weekly newspaper is that there’s always that one day when you’re in the dark because of the timing of when the paper goes to press.

For the Brandon Valley Journal, that day is Tuesday. The paper goes to print on Tuesday late morning and hits newsstands Tuesday afternoons. So any live sporting events that happen on Tuesday night are a bit of a guessing game.

For this particular column, Tuesday’s boys’ and girls’ basketball games in Mitchell could enhance, or disrupt the point I’m trying to make.

And that point is this: can these basketball teams from Brandon Valley ever lose?

Following weekend wins over Spearfish and Douglas, the girls have now won 13 straight. 

13! 

That’s a school record, and it’s been an impressive run through the ESD portion of their schedule, and then some.

Over that stretch, the Lynx have outscored their opponents 805-481. Eight of those 13 wins have been by double digits, five by 20-plus points and four by 30-plus points including a 45-point win over Sioux Falls Lincoln on Feb. 10.

The girls started the season 1-3 but haven’t lost a game since a strange 58-51 loss at Class A Tea Area on Dec. 21. That seems like forever ago.

“We don’t really talk about it because I think we know within ourselves that we’re capable of doing this,” senior Paisley Hoff said. “Obviously those first three losses were a really tough test but we knew eventually we’d pick it up.”

‘Pick it up’ might be the understatement of the season for the Lynx. They’ve been dismantling teams, and they’re a blast to watch. 

To put it in perspective, the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces won the title last year with a record of 34-6. Their longest winning streak of the season was nine games from June 11-July 5. Am I comparing the 2023-24 version of the Brandon Valley Lynx to the Las Vegas Aces? Of course not. But I don’t care the level, or the sport, you string 13 in a row together, and that’s saying something.

For the boys, it’s 12 straight. If not for a weird game on Jan. 4 where they let a five-point halftime lead get away by scoring just two points in the third quarter, their winning streak would be even longer.

Senior Brady Wells agrees.

“It should be longer, to be honest,” he said. “We blew some easy early in the year that we should have had. It’s kind of expected, with the schedule we’ve been playing.”

That game against the Arrows was Brandon Valley’s last loss. They, like the girls, have been relatively cruising over their past 12 games en route to the current win streak. Ten of their 12 wins have been by double digits, seven by 20-plus points and two by 30-plus points that included a 34-point win at Rapid City Central on Feb. 2.

Again, by comparison only, the longest winning streak in the NBA so far this year is nine by Cleveland, New York, Orlando and the LA Clippers.

Twelve straight is impressive, especially in the ultra-competitive AA class in South Dakota. But for as impressive as it is, the Lynx have some work to do to break the school record. 

The 1997-98 Brandon Valley boys opened the season 4-2 before ripping off 17 straight before claiming the school’s first basketball championship culminated by a 63-58 win over Sioux Falls O’Gorman.

Should the Lynx run the table in the regular season, win their SoDak 16 game to open the postseason, and then the opening round of the state tournament, it would tie the record of 17.

But if they make it that far, they’d be just two wins shy of winning their first state title since 2019. That is obviously the ultimate goal.

“We don’t talk about it,” boys head coach Craig Nelson said of the winning streak. “I don’t think they even know. I certainly don’t, except when I do these interviews and get reminded.”

But those streaks all depend on Tuesday’s results at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, which you’ll know about long before you read this column.