The Lamar State Seahawks won’t be taking Saturday’s game against Victoria College lightly.

“In this sport there’s a lot of times the underdog wins, ” sophomore forward J’Son Brooks said. “Every game is going to be taken like it’s our last one. We take it like that we’ll get a lot of wins.”
“We just take it one game at a time,” coach Lance Madison said. “Right now we’re focusing on Victoria. No game’s bigger than the other. We played pretty well and beat them pretty handedly, and I’m sure they’re going to come over here with a sense of urgency and give us their best shot. We’ll have to play a hard game. We can’t come in and get distracted.”

The Seahawks have played each of their Region XIV opponents at least once already, and Madison says he tells his team at this point it’s a sprint now to determine the seeding for the postseason conference tournament.

“Before you know it, Sophomore Night will be here, and hopefully we’ll be in the postseason,” Madison said. “We have to stay focused and stay healthy and don’t have a mental slip to where we don’t beat a team that we should beat.”

The Seahawks are 12-12 overall and 6-7 in their conference, tied for second with Blinn College, which defeated Lamar State 88-77 when the Seahawks paid them a visit on Wednesday.

Angelina College leads the South Zone Division with an 11-2 conference record. The Seahawks face the Roadrunners next Saturday as the second of two road games after traveling to Coastal Bend. The back-to-back road games will be tough on the Seahawks next week, Madison said.

“Thursday we probably won’t get much practice in because it’s a long bus ride,” Madison said. “We’ll have one day to prepare for Angelina, who’s at the top of the South Division, and we’re going to have to travel to Lufkin and play Angelina, so it’s a quick turnaround time. Unfortunately it’s the rotation in our schedule where we’re playing two consecutive road games, and the first one is probably the furthest opponent in our division, Coastal Bend.”

The focus for today will be staying focused on the present challenge, Victoria College, which is 0-13 in conference. As long as Lamar State takes it one game at a time, the Seahawks should do well, Brooks said.

“Let’s do the things that we come to practice for every day, and if we do that we’ll be alright,” he said. “We need to take care of these teams and then we’ll be on the road heading to Bossier City.”

Brooks said defense is improving and the Seahawks are forcing more turnovers and making points. Defense is something that Brooks says he excels at, too.

“I’m going after the biggest guy on the court and try to shut him down,” he said. “I’m going to play defense, you’ve got to have a dog mentality and that’s how I come into the game.”

In the end, postseason placement may not be known until the buzzer sounds on the last regular season game. Lamar faces Blinn again at home on Feb. 29.

“We might not know until after our game against Blinn, and we may not know because Lee plays at 6 p.m. on Saturdays,” Madison said. “It usually comes down to the last game played because it’s such a parity in our league. It’s going to be interesting seeing how things turn out.”