One question has been foremost on the minds of Auburn Riverside girls basketball fans this week.

“Everybody is asking me what we are going to do to beat Sumner,” said Ravens coach Derek Pegram.

With the Ravens and Spartans currently knotted at the top of the South Puget Sound League 3A standings with identical 6-1 league records and scheduled to face each other at 7 p.m. Friday at Auburn Riverside High School, the question is valid.

But so is the converse.

“I think Sumner should be thinking about what they need to do to beat us,” Pegram said. “We’re very athletic, and we’re riding an eight-game unbeaten streak. We haven’t lost since they beat us [58-44 on Dec. 9]. They need to figure out how to beat us also.”

The Ravens have been on fire, despite fielding a relatively young, inexperienced squad so far this season.

“I think we’re doing better than what I expected,” said Pegram, who took over the program last year. “I didn’t know what to expect this year. Last year was my first year coaching, and we didn’t know who was going to play. We didn’t know if Brittni Williams [who led the team in scoring last season] was going to turn out. When she decided not to, we didn’t know what our identity was going to be.”

With Williams choosing to concentrate on her track and field career, Pegram said, all he knew coming in was that the Ravens were going to be young and they were going to have to navigate through a tough SPSL 3A stacked with powerhouse programs such as Auburn Mountainview, Sumner and Enumclaw.

Now, with half the season in the books and Auburn Riverside on top of the league standings and boasting an 11-1 overall record, the team has figured out its identity.

“We just took who tried out and tried to coach them up, and find a system that worked for them,” he said. “They’ve been doing exactly what we’ve asked of them. They work hard in practice and put a lot of effort in.”

He continued:

“Our top-3 scorers are all sophomores (Olivia Denton, McKenzi Williams and Faith Turner),” Pegram said. “I knew the future would be bright, but it came quicker than we expected.”

McKenzi Williams is leading the team with 10.6 points per game with Olivia Denton trailing with 10.2 ppg and Faith Turner adding 7.3 ppg.

The real key, however, has been the team’s discovery of its own identity.

“We figured out who we are,” Pegram said. “Last year we struggled with that, I know I did as a first-year coach. This group now knows what to do.”

And what the Ravens do is overwhelm teams with staunch defense, speed and athleticism.

“We’re a pressing team, and we run when we can,” he said. “If we need to, I can call in a set and they can run that.”

For any Raven girls basketball team, especially this year’s squad which is again competing in the state 3A classification, comparisons to the program’s three state championship teams – 2008 and 2007 in 3A and 2010 in 4A – are inevitable.

Pegram said the comparisons, however, don’t affect the girls that much.

“We don’t really talk about that too much,” Pegram said. “We know the programs had a lot of success and some came at the 3A level. But I don’t think dropping down to 3A made that big of a difference this year. I just think we’re further along as a team. Even if we were 4A, I think this team would be winning.”

In fact, Pegram said, he believed the SPSL 3A was more competitive than the 4A this season.

“It’s a crap shoot in this league,” he said. “Anyone can win on any night.”

Now the pressure is on for the Ravens to prepare and avenge the earlier loss at the hands of Sumner.

“Our focus is really just on us and getting better every day,” Pegram said. “We’re just going to take what we have now, and we’re going to take what was successful in that first game and do it. But there is only so much we can do focusing on other teams. As long as we do what we do, we should be fine.”