Will they do it again is the question everyone is asking. Having gone to the UIL 5A state tournament three out of the past four years, the girls’ basketball team goes for its second consecutive state championship beginning Thursday at 7 p.m. when the team takes on Randle High School at the Alamodome in the state semifinals.
“We’re very excited and our kids are excited, but as it was mentioned earlier for some of them it was a foregone conclusion,” head coach Ross Reedy said. “We’re tickled, the biggest thing, the most exciting thing is that we get 20 weeks and we get the full 20 weeks of the season.”
Going for their second consecutive title, this year’s team is different than last year as the 2022-23 team graduated five seniors. However Reedy, on believes the team’s talent has increased this year.
“This is the highest our talent baseline is as high as it’s ever been,” Reedy said. “It’s been a process of us transitioning into new leadership you know, new builders, you know, our culture and character. And so that might be something that inhibited us a little bit, but where we’re different is that our talent level is really high.”
However, not everything clicked right away with the team starting the season 7-6. But heading into district play, the team turned it around, and enters Thursday’s game on a 19 game winning streak.
“I feel like our team is in a good place at the moment,” senior Judy Aluga said. “The past three games have been really good for us as a whole, except for the first quarters, and I think this is probably the most together we’ve played since the beginning of the season.”
If the team wins Thursday, they will Saturday at 3:00 p.m. against the winner of Mansfield Timberview and Cedar Park.
“We intentionally set up our schedule at the beginning of the season to be [back-to-back games],” Reedy said. “I do it for that reason, then I also do it because it’s set up like the state tournament. And so we try to stay with it and so it shouldn’t be all that different. We have heavy prep for both [opponents] [and] all possible opponents.”
