All the waiting and practicing has turned out to be worth it.

Coach Tyrel Allen and his Plains Horsemen clinched a berth into this week’s Western B divisional tournament when the Eureka Lions defeated the rival Thompson Falls Blue Hawks in Eureka Saturday night. Both Sanders County teams finished 2-6 in District 7B play and the Horsemen won out based on total points scored against each other in head-to-head games during the regular season.

The confusing Western B scenario was set up by the fact that District 7B did not have a more straightforward process in the form of a tournament this season. Curiously, District 6B did hold a tournament last weekend while 7B did not.

In Ronan Thursday, the Horsemen will open Western B play with a first round game against 6B tournament champion Anaconda at 3 p.m. Of local interest, the Plains Trotters will play in the first round of the Western B girls tournament at 1:30 against Florence, immediately before the Plains boys take the court.

Allen and his Horsemen closed out regular season play way back on Feb. 14 and then had to sweat out the rest of the month waiting to see whether they would qualify for the Western B tourney or not. Allen said they tried various things to mix it up in practice, including having assistant coaches Scott Fredrickson and Alec Cole running practices certain days each week.

“We did some different things, tried changing it up in practice, Scott and Alec have a little different way of running practices than I do. Glad to see the two weeks weren’t for nothing,” Allen said. "This is really good for the kids to get this opportunity to play in the divisional tournament.

“We’re excited, we’ve worked all year for this,” he added. "Now we can just go out and have fun. We really have nothing to lose, can just go out and play.”

Allen says Anaconda plays an effective 1-3-1 zone defense that has been giving opponents fits this season. “We’ve been trying to address it in practice but it’s hard to

replicate what Anaconda has been able to do with that defense,” he said. “They fly around and create a lot of havoc, we will just have to deal with it the best we can.”