Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. LaBrae senior David Blackmon III drives and scores at during a recent game against Lakeview. He averages 10.5 points per game for the Vikings.

LEAVITTSBURG — While the roster size may be small, that hasn’t stopped LaBrae from putting in the work and boasting one of its best campaigns to date.

In fact, it may be to their benefit, with every single one of the Vikings’ 13 players having to push each other that much more.

Sitting at a record of 18-2 after winning the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference (Grey Tier) title outright for the first time since 2018, the Vikings are aiming to have a big postseason.

Coach Chad Kiser also won his 300th career game earlier in the season.

“It’s special. We’re young still,” Kiser said. “Offensively, we have a lot of weapons and we’re tough to stop. We kind of knew that going in. Our biggest problem is that there probably aren’t enough basketballs to get everybody the shots they probably want.

“But, we knew it was going to be defense for us this year. For most nights we’ve been able to sit down and play some pretty good defense, and we’re getting better at it, which is important right now. That’s what’s going to carry us. Our offense is good enough to win, but our defense sometimes isn’t. We’ll go as far in the tournament as our defense will let us.”

On the scoring side of the equation, junior Derek Wilson leads LaBrae with 18.3 points per game. Sophomore Austin Rowe is scoring 16.5 points per game, while senior David Blackmon III is at 10.5 points per game and fellow senior Jay McGarry is averaging 9.1 points per game.

“We only have 13 kids. We normally have about 12 or 13 try out for the team per grade,” Kiser said. “We have one freshman, eight sophomores, two juniors and two seniors. That rounds up my whole lineup. Depth in practice is tough right now and kind of hurts us. But in the game, we’ve got seven guys that have been playing pretty strong in a seven-man rotation. It’s worked out for us pretty well.”

Wilson added, “I think it just makes us tighter as a team. It makes us kind of like brothers, and we play better when we’re on the court. All of us together and just the tightness between the group, it’s really special. The key ingredient is just showing up to work at practice and really working our tails off and getting after each other in practice.”

The Vikings suffered their first loss during the second game of the season, a 63-61 overtime thriller against Howland, before winning their next ten consecutive games — which included a 71-62 win over Bristol, another 18-win team.

An eight-point setback versus Newton Falls came in late January, but now LaBrae is riding a seven-game win streak. The Vikings are eyeing a potential 20-win regular season, which would be their first 20-win campaign since going 24-1 during the 2016-2017 school year. That year concluded with a loss to Garfield in the district title.

Kiser feels that his team has been building confidence all season, but the pieces really began to fall into place back in mid-January.

“I think the win at Campbell — we thought we had a chance, but I think that proved it by going on the road and playing a really good Campbell team, one of the teams we shared the league with,” Kiser said. “Winning on the road at Newton Falls early on kind of set the tone. That kind of carried it over at Campbell. That’s probably the turning point that gave us the confidence to say hey, ‘we got a chance to do something special,’ and win the league.”

Blackmon sees that being a leader this season has even more importance with his high school career winding down.

“That feels really important to me because this is (our) last year, so it’s our chance to be conference champs again and to set our legacy in LaBrae’s books,” Blackmon said. “I feel like we’re improving drastically, and we’re doing better on the things we used to mess up on.

“The drills that we do at practice — taking them seriously and working harder on ourselves,”

Rowe added. “I think it’s just been ball movement on the offensive side, and staying locked in on the defensive end and continuing to work in practice on the things we need to improve. If we get stops on the defensive end, we can get rebounds and push the ball down the court. We like pushing the ball, so that gives us good shots. It’s been great. Jay is great at driving the ball and kicking. We have shooters, good post players, it’s a good all-around team.”

LaBrae has a tune-up contest this evening against Springfield, then one more against Girard next week to close out the regular season before heading into the OHSAA tournament.