Coach Dave Benter likes where his Brownstown Central boys basketball team is as far as making progress.

The Braves, 24-4 and winners of 15 straight games, will face Sullivan (21-5) at 4 p.m. Saturday in the Class 2A Washington Regional.

“I think we’ve gotten a lot better defensively,” Benter said. “We’ve been a good rebounding team. We’ve been more efficient on offense, too. We didn’t play very smart (at Jennings County). We’ve played a lot smarter since then.”

This will be the first time Benter has coached against Sullivan’s Jeff Moore, who is in his 34th season coaching the Golden Arrows and has a record of 531-285.

Prior to moving to Sullivan, Moore was junior varsity coach at Brownstown Central and Benter said, “He was my JV coach.”

While the Braves are on a roll, the Arrows lost the final game of the regular season, 43-35 to North Daviess. The Braves defeated North Daviess 45-20 Dec. 22 in the holiday tournament played on the Cougars’ floor.

The only other common opponent the teams have is South Knox. The Braves topped South Knox in the North Davies Tournament, while Sullivan beat Knox twice, including 60-50 in the first round of the Paoli Sectional.

Brownstown ranks sixth in the state in offensive average at 70 points per game, and is second in margin of victory at 23.32 points per game.

Benter said, “Our health is the main thing. We’ve got a couple guys out sick and Colby (Hall) out right now.”

Hall, a 6-6 junior who is averaging 10.9 points and leads the team in rebounds at 6.8 per game, suffered an ankle injury against Henryville in the sectional last week. He was not at practice Tuesday.

“We’re hoping he’s back Saturday, we’re just not sure yet,” Benter said, and mentioned not having Hall also hurts the team on defense.

Benter spoke on the team controlling themselves in the opening part of postseason.

“I thought what we did really well in the sectional, we controlled ourselves,” he said. “We defended at a pretty high level, I thought we rebounded the basketball really well, and we didn’t turn the ball over. We’ve got to make sure we continue those things. Any time you do all those things you’re going to have a chance. I thought our guys played with a lot of poise Saturday night.”

“Things could have gone south there when things got really ugly toward the end and I thought our guys really showed their mental toughness.”

These Brownstown seniors and juniors have played one game on the Washington floor, a regular-season game against the Hatchets during the 2021-22 season.

Parker Hehman, who has been starting varsity for the Braves since his freshman season said this year “there was a lot of pressure because it could always be your last game.”

He said he felt like the Braves had three good performances in winning their third straight sectional.

“I thought Saturday, especially, we played really good defense. A lot of people talk about our offense, but our defense was pretty good Saturday night.

“It’s the same goal for regional as it was for sectional, just go win no matter what it takes, just win. We’ve got to come ready to play right from the tip.

“We don’t want to get down to start the game, so we just need to come ready to play and do what we’ve done every game this year.”

The last time the Braves lost was Jan. 5 at Jennings County, and Hehman said that game served as a wakeup call.

“A lot of our faults showed that game, so ever since then we’ve just been working on getting better at everything we need to. A couple times that game we just took one pass and shot a bunch of 3s so we need to work to get in the paint and get good shots.”

Hehman, who is second on the team in scoring at 11.9 per game, leads the Braves in assists with 148.

The Arrows have a balanced scoring attack, led by 6-4 sophomore Cooper Bock at 12.5 points per game. Marcus Rosher, a 6-foot senior, averages 11.1, Javyn Woodard, a 5-10 senior, averages 10 per game and Aidan McCammon averages 9.3 per contest.

“We’re bigger. Even without Colby we’ve got a little bit more size,” Benter said. “Both teams are veterans. They’re balanced, and we’ve got good balance. Jack scores a lot of points, but we’ve got a lot of guys capable of scoring.”

Jack Benter leads the Braves in scoring with 591 points in 23 games for an average of 25.7 per game.

Hall, Hehman, Adam Stahl, Chace Coomer, Micah Sheffer, and Lane Pendleton have all scored in double figures at least once this season.

“We’re going to have to take some things away from them, and I’m sure they feel the same way about us.”

The last time the Braves played in the Washington Regional was 2017.

Benter says he enjoys coaching in the “Hatchet House.” “There are few venues in the state that are a really neat atmosphere and that is one of them.

“There is a lot of tradition there, a lot of good teams have played there. We’re really excited about going there.

“It’s important to get off to a good start. We’re both veteran teams. They have a good post player, but they have good guard play to go with him.

“So there are a lot of things we’re going to have to take away.”

There will be two games at Washington with Bethesda Christian playing Clay City in a Class 1A regional game at 1 p.m.