GREEN BAY, Wisc. — The WIAA state girls basketball tournament tips off in Green Bay on Thursday.
Whitefish Bay Dominican is the clear underdog with the most losses of any team to make state. But they'll use that "us against the world" mentality to their benefit.
The fourth seeded Knights take on top seed Waupun Thursday afternoon. Brookfield East, Kettle Moraine, Pewaukee, and Laconia are the other local teams that made state this year.
"Really really pumped," Alicia Burgos says. "We subconsciously knew we could get this far. But I don't think anyone really believed that we could get this far until we really started playing together as a team, and then I think something just flipped in everyone's head. Everyone's really excited."
For sophomore Keona McGee, it's a big deal to make state early in her prep career.
"I mean, it feels good," McGee says. "There's not many people able to even make it until their senior year or like never make it so, I mean it's a big accomplishment for a sophomore."
At 18-9 Dominican has more than double the losses of any other state team, but the team caught fire at the right time.
"Beginning of the season was a little rough," Burgos says. "Then just something clicked. It was just one game. We all started playing a lot. We all started playing together. We started playing like as a team should. Team chemistry was better than ever. I really think that's a big factor, the team chemistry."
"We had a lot of ups and downs," McGee says. "But we focused on the bad before we could focus on the good so that we could improve. So I feel like we put a lot of effort into actually getting better, because a lot of people say they wanna get better but not actually put the effort into getting better."
"It makes me like really happy to say that we could be the first program, like first team in the program's history to go to state finals," Burgos says. "Crazy."
