Early in the season, Auburn Mountainview girls basketball coach Chris Carr wasn’t sure whether his young team would garner the experience necessary to make it through a tough South Puget Sound League 3A Division and on to the postseason tournaments.

Last year the team went 11-13 overall, taking home third in the SPSL 3A before getting bounced in the first round of the West Central District III tourney.

This year the team was expecting an uphill climb as it struggles to integrate three returning players, Angel Pele, Stephanie Smolinski and Tasha Al-Nakib, into a team chock full of underclassman, a transfer from Tahoma (senior Lizzy Harrison) and Ida Hüners, an exchange student from Germany.

After a regular season that found the Lady Lions struggling to win close games, finishing fourth in the SPSL 3A with a 9-6 record, they seemed to have finally hit their stride.

Currently, the team has won its last seven games, including three consecutive loser-out contests, and now finds itself on the verge of winning its way into the state 3A championships.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve said to our kids that it doesn’t matter how you’re playing in December, it matters how you’re playing in February and March,” Carr said. “So hopefully we’re peaking at the right time.

“I think early in the season we were finding ways to lose close games,” he added. “And now we’re finding ways to win close games. And the difference is our level of toughness. We’re getting tougher, both mentally and physically.”

Carr said he believes that the change dates back to the team’s 61-44 loss to White River on Jan. 24.

“I think the loss at White River where we got humbled pretty good (was the turning point),” Carr said. “They throttled us, and basically we had to regroup and go one of two ways. We can go south or we can pick our chins up and get after it and get to work.”

Since then the team’s only loss has been a 51-50 decision to Bonney Lake.

“It’s mentality over time (practicing),” Carr said. “We’ve got freshman, we’ve got transfers and an exchange student. Three of our five starters are kids who were not with us last year. So developing that attitude and mentality, to be tough, takes some time.”

“I think we just started understanding all the little things we needed to do to win,” Smolinski said. “Things like taking charges, getting on the floor after loose balls.”

Hüners said she believes the decision to start working more as a team was the turning point.

“I don’t think there was a special event or anything,” she said. “We just started working as a team and started playing together and helping each other. We motivated each other and there was a big difference.”

Now the team will play a familiar foe – Enumclaw – in a winner-to-state contest at 6 p.m. today at Clover Park High School in Lakewood.

“It always seems when there is a big game, it’s between us and Enumclaw,” Carr said. “Whether it’s a tiebreaker, or three years ago it was a trip to state. This year it’s another trip to state. It’s fun though. They’re fun to compete with, they’re good character kids and they’re very well coached. I told the kids it’s going to be another close game that comes down to a handful of plays at the end and who makes the fewest mistakes and who is tougher.”

“It’s exciting, but we’re also nervous, having to wait a whole week to play,” Smolinski said. “They’re good competitors. We need to do the small things and not get caught up in their game, just play ours. We’ve figured out what we need to do to win, we just need to pull it off and win.”

The winner of the game will play either Hazen or Bonney Lake for the fourth and sixth seeds into the state tourney.

The loser will get another shot at the state tourney, playing a loser-out game against the loser of the Bonney Lake versus Hazen game for the seventh seed.

“We’re in a better position than we were two weeks ago,” Carr said. “Now we’ve got two cracks at it.”

“We have jitters, but it’s because we know there is a lot on the line for us,” Smolinski said. “I think we know that we can do it, it’s just a matter of whether we execute or not. It’s exciting though. It’s that rush that we all play for. This is what we’ve played our whole season for.”