Pictured above- Sacred Heart head coach Carl Hines

Skylar Douglas isn’t the least bit worried about how her Sacred Heart girls basketball team will handle the spotlight of its first state tournament.

The way the Knights tore through their Class 2A sub-state last week at Berean Academy, they enter Tuesday’s state tournament quarterfinals brimming with confidence.

“I think we have more adrenaline going into it,” Douglas, the Knights’ senior guard, said of their 4 p.m. first-round matchup with St. Mary’s Colgan, scheduled for 4 p.m. at Kansas City Kansas Community College. “I think our team definitely has a shot.”

Senior Skylar Douglas

“We have a lot of good players on our team, so I’m really excited going into it, and I know that we can do really well as a team.”

The sixth-seeded Knights bring a 22-4 record into their first state tournament since 2009, taking on a Colgan team (23-2) that has qualified 12 of the last 15 years, including a fourth-place finish last March.

Oddly, while Sacred Heart’s first-round game with No. 3 seed Colgan is in Kansas City, the other three girls quarterfinals take place in Salina at Tony’s Pizza Events Center. The four winners advance to the semifinal and final rounds starting Thursday at Emporia’s White Auditorium.

The quarterfinal matchups in Salina match No. 4 Eureka (22-2) against No. 5 Oakley at noon, No. 1 Ellinwood (25-1) with No. 8 Rossville (15-10) at 2 p.m., and No. 2 Moundridge (23-2) with No. 7 Valley Heights (19-7) at 6 p.m.

For Sacred Heart, the season as played out much as fifth-year coach Carl Hines had hoped. The Knights were at their best in the sub-state, blowing out Herington and Bennington before crushing higher-seeded Conway Springs, 59-34, in the finals.

“Our starting five, our basketball IQ is good, and throughout the course of last summer we just knew that we were tougher than we’d ever been. We were more resilient than we’d ever been,” Hines said. “We’re able to make mistakes and not dwell on it.”

“We just continue to play the game, and we have a confidence about us with this group, and they jell. They all get along, they’re unselfish, they just make the right basketball play, and that makes it really fun.”

Despite their lack of state tournament experience, the Knights come into the tournament battle-tested, with 12 of their 26 games coming against teams that reached their respective sub-state finals. Three of their four losses were to state qualifiers — Class 4A Chapman, 3A Ellsworth and 2A Rossville — while they beat 2A defending champion Moundridge in the finals of the Hillsboro Trojan Classic.

“We’ve played good competition all year, and I don’t think we’ll be overwhelmed,” Hines said. “We’ve seen a bunch of really good teams.”

The Knights have won 13 of their last 14 games, including five straight heading into the tournament.

“From the start of the season, we’ve just showed so much improvement,” Douglas said.

Guard Nicole Richards, the other senior starter, added that Knights have put in the work as well.

Senior Nicole Richards

“From day one at practice, our effort and grit to get things done has shown,” she said. “And whenever we set our minds to something, it just kind of works for us and how hard we work in practice.”

With guards Douglas, Richards, junior Addie Lee and freshman Emmy Lee surrounding junior center Edyn Sharpton in the starting lineup, Sacred Heart is built for speed, pushing the tempo with relentless pressure defense while pushing the tempo at the other end.

“We’ve pushed the ball up and we’re really good about our transition defense,” said Douglas, a four-year starter and career 1,000-point scorer who averages 15.2 points and 3.9 steals per game. “Our posts run the court, our guards, we shoot it well, and we just have a really fast team.”

But it all starts with defense.

“One thing that our coach has said, like day one from when we were freshmen, is that defense always travels,” said Richards, who is second on the team in steals with a 3.1 average. “You’re not always going to shoot the ball perfect, but there’s always defense that you can count on.”

Offensively, Addie Lee leads the team with 15.3 points per game, with Emmy Lee adding 11.4 and 4.4 assists. Both Lees shoot better than 40% from 3-point range.

Sacred Heart will have its hands full against a high-powered Colgan team that also dominated its sub-state, including a 91-38 victory over Cedar Vale-Dexter in the final.

The Panthers are led in scoring by senior guard Jakayla Davis, who averages 30.8 points, 6.2 rebounds, four assists and four steals, and holds this season reached 2,000 points for her career. Junior forward Bella Ascanio adds nine points and nine rebounds, with freshman averaging nine points.

But Hines expects the Knights to hold their own.

“We are just tenacious and confident, and I think we are peaking at the right time, too,” he said.