Dreams do come true for the Coppell girls basketball team. The Cowgirls have put together one of the most successful seasons of any Cowgirl basketball team in school history, breaking school records and earning its highest state ranking ever. 

“I’ve always dreamt of being in the playoffs,” Coppell sophomore guard Ella Spiller said. “Since I was little, I’ve wanted to be a Cowgirl and I wanted to play Cowgirl sports and now that I am here and we’re going to playoffs, it’s just a thing that I am so excited for.”

After a stellar season, the No. 4 Cowgirls face Allen in a Class 6A Region I bi-district playoff game at Prosper Rock Hill today at 7 p.m. The Cowgirls will be the home team while the Eagles will be the visiting team. 

After scouting Allen (19-14, 7-4 in District 5-6A), on Friday in its playoff seeding game against Little Elm on Friday at Flower Mound Marcus, the Cowgirls (35-1, 13-1 in District 6-6A) were able to pick up valuable information that they will use in preparation for the Eagles

The Eagles utilize a high pressing zone defense and use their height offensively to disrupt opposing defenses, the key to success for the Cowgirls will be to pick apart and find gaps in Allen’s press.

More importantly for the Cowgirls, however, will be to keep their nerves cool from tipoff. In  Coppell’s lone loss of the season, a 42-37 loss to Plano East on Jan. 11, the nerves got to the Cowgirls as they fell to a 18-2 deficit in the first quarter. Starting off cool, calm and collected has been the recipe for the Cowgirls’ success and maintaining that mentality will be crucial for the Cowgirls. 

“There are nerves but we know we can [win] and we’re going to get it done,” Spiller said. “If we all do our job, whether it is playing hard defense, making down shots or handling the pressure on the ball, then we’ll be set. When we play scared, we don’t do well. We need to come in and say ‘this is our game, this is us’ and just play our game; when we worry about everything else, we don’t play as a team and we don’t play as well as we can so it has to be ‘this is our game, let’s win and let’s move on’.”

The methodical mindset of the Cowgirls has been set in its culture since the beginning of the season. After a 13-13 season last year, there has been a massive culture switch for the Cowgirls, part of which can be attributed to the togetherness and the sisterhood of the group.

Together, the team has grown more confident in their abilities and desires to play and win for each.

“At the beginning of the season, not all of us thought that we’d be able to make it to playoffs so that was our main goal and [making playoffs alone] was a big accomplishment,” Coppell junior guard Saiya Patel said. “We realized throughout the season that we’re capable of doing more so we’ve just been working hard to try to accomplish as much as we can in what is already a successful season.”

Follow Meer (@mahfuz_meer) and @SidekickSports on Twitter.