The Aberdeen Central boys’ basketball team enters the postseason looking for revenge.

The Golden Eagles will have a rematch against Sioux Falls Roosevelt in Saturday’s Class AA SoDak 16 in Sioux Falls at 3 p.m. Central coach Brent Norberg said his players are a confident group heading into the matchup.

“We’ve had a lot of close games that could’ve gone either way and we’ve beaten good teams this year,” Norberg said. “I’m not worried about their confidence one bit. These kids believe in what we’re doing, they believe in themselves, they’re great teammates to each other. They know that they don’t have to do it by themselves. They do it together and they’ve got a great chance to win.”

The Rough Riders and Golden Eagles clashed in Aberdeen just over a week ago, with Roosevelt escaping with a 55-53 win. Central nearly denied the visitors the victory on a last-second 3-point attempt, and although the shot did not fall, Norberg says his team knows it can compete with the Rough Riders.

“We know that we can play with them; we’re right there,” Norberg said. “Actually, looking at the game, we thought we should’ve won that game, but we didn’t. Credit to them, they made the plays and we did not. We had too many unforced errors, too many mistakes that we allowed them to get baskets off of, and we’ve got to eliminate those.”

Norberg said turnovers, failing to handle the Rough Riders pressure defense, and the lack of execution on offense late in the game were also issues that the Golden Eagles have been working on correcting since last week’s contest, in addition to improving on the small everyday details that the team has worked on since the first day of practice.

“This time of year, you’re just kind of fine-tuning everything,” Norberg said. “You can’t do a lot of whole new things right now. You just got to keep working on what you do, try to talk it through, and try to figure out what their tendencies are, and try to take some things away that they really like to do.”

While Central is focusing on limiting Roosevelt’s strengths and goals, the Golden Eagles are also working on succeeding in their gameplan and continuing to improve in the days leading up to the game.

Norberg noted several aspects that will be important to earn a victory on Saturday.

“We’ve got to take care of the basketball. We can’t turn it over and we’ve got to rebound,” Norberg said. “If we win those two battles, I think we’ll have a great chance to win the game.”

He also noted that making shots will be an obvious key for either squad to come away with the win.

“You can win all those other battles, but if you don’t make shots, you’re not going to win,” Norberg said. “I also think we can’t give them easy (shots). We’ve got to make them earn everything.”

While he has seen his team improve in those aspects since the beginning of the season, Norberg also knows all of the improvements will need to be on full display on Saturday.

“I think we’ve been resilient; I think we’ve got some more depth. I think we’ve strived for some consistency offensively, and I think we’ve gotten better there,” Norberg said. “Rebounding we’ve improved some, taking care of the ball we’ve improved some, but all these things need to be at a higher level to win Saturday.”