Staff file photo / Preston Byers LaBrae’s Ally Magoulick dribbles on a fast break during the Vikings’ win vs. Brookfield in Leavittsburg on Dec. 15.

Defense turns into offense – that’s the idea for LaBrae’s girls basketball team, and to this point in the season, so far so good.

The Vikings are 9-0 on the year and 4-0 in conference play, with eight of their first nine wins coming by at least 13 points against a defense that prides itself on creating turnovers and scoring off takeaways.

“We have a great rotation of our players right now, and every one of them can defend and get in the passing lanes and continue to pressure,” LaBrae head coach Mandy Rowe said. “We always stress that defense is our number-one priority, because if the other team can’t score, chances are better for us to win the game. So we, over the last few years, have put such an emphasis on that.”

The defense-first mindset has been a massive boon to the Vikings; after a 5-18 campaign during the 2022-23 season, LaBrae improved to 17-6 the following year and then to 19-7 last season. Each of the past two years, the Vikings have also won double-digit games in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference (MVAC) Grey Tier.

However, the league title has eluded them, with a 10-4 mark two years ago only good enough for third place and last season’s 11-3 record sufficient for a tie for second. During both years, just like in 2023, the league title went to Crestview.

The Rebels have been the most consistent source of pain for LaBrae – and many others – as they have beaten the Vikings in 11 consecutive meetings and won 43 straight games against MVAC Grey opponents over the past nearly three years.

To best prepare for Crestview, which Rowe believes has the “best player in the area” in Addison Rhodes, the Vikings coach said they have taken a months-long approach.

“Well, it started with our work in the offseason, with the girls playing all the time, and we had girls playing some AAU. We did a lot of summer workouts, and we went to some summer leagues and shootouts,” Rowe said. “But more importantly, we bumped our schedule up. So we are going to be playing some good competition to prepare us for those games. I think having a tougher schedule will help to prepare us for that. I know it won’t be an easy task.”

Beating Crestview is seemingly all but a necessity to winning the league title, a goal Rowe said she and her team have talked about, just not very often.

“We take each game as, ‘OK, this is a stepping stone to the league,'” Rowe said. “When we started our non-conference play, those were to get us ready and prepared for our league games, so then each league game, you play like it’s your last game, like this is for the league championship each game. But we don’t put so much pressure on the girls to talk about it all the time.”

The one-game-at-a-time mindset will be of the utmost importance as the Vikings continue through their conference slate, which includes highly anticipated meetings with the Rebels in East Fairfield on Monday and in Leavittsburg on Jan. 26, as well as a pair of games vs. Southeast, which beat LaBrae last season.

If the Vikings can win most, if not all, of those games, they would almost certainly be in prime position to continue the program’s ascension and do what they have been building toward for years.

“They know what it feels like to win. They like the feeling of winning,” Rowe said of her team. “We tell them in practice, we talk to them a lot about how they have the opportunity to do something very special, and we’ve told them that since day one. Last year, our team slogan was ‘Raise the Bar,’ because we had a successful season, but we wanted to get even better and not be satisfied with what we did, and it’s the same this year – to keep working, to continue to grow. And it starts with a lot of trust in each other and the girls, and then trust in the coaching staff. I think that’s where we’re at right now.”