Pictured- Head coach Justin Ebert

If the Salina South girls basketball team has attacked the 2025-26 season with a renewed sense of urgency, there’s a good reason.

For the Cougars’ eight seniors, there is no tomorrow.

“We’re just excited to play together for our final season,” said senior guard Brooklyn Jordan, one of four returning senior starters on a team that during her South career has yet to win more than 11 games. “I think it finally hit us that we need to turn it up a little bit if we want to make it (to state).”

So far so good for the veteran Cougars, who head into Friday’s 6 p.m. home game against Maize South ranked No. 8 in Class 5A with a 9-2 record and 4-1 mark in Ark Valley Chisholm Trail League Division I.

Justin Ebert, in his fifth season as South’s head coach, has enjoyed watching the seniors grow each year to where they now have taken their game to a new level.

“I think we’ve had a nice start to the season,” he said. “We’ve been able to win some close games that maybe in years past we haven’t been able to get.”

“It helps having the experience we have — the eight seniors on our team this year — in those moments, making the right play and knocking down shots and having confidence to win some games we’ve lacked as a program in the past few years. I’m really excited for the start, but there’s a lot of basketball ahead of us.”

The Cougars are in for a challenge Friday against No. 3-ranked Maize South, which also is 9-2 but has yet to lose to a Kansas team. The Mavericks went 1-2 in an early December tournament in Arkansas but have not been pushed since.

But while knocking off Maize South may be a tall order, South isn’t shying away from the challenge. That in itself is evidence that the Cougars have matured.

“Teams like Derby and Maize South last year, we were like, ‘Oh no, we’ll go play our best.’ Now, it’s show them who we actually are and give them a run for their money,” said Jordan, the Cougars’ second-leading scorer at 8.5 points per game and assist leader with a 2.2 average. “They are known for being a very good team, and I’ll give it to them they are, but I think we can play very well against them if we try.”

Senior center Paityn Fritz agreed.

“Every game is winnable, and every game is losable,” said the 6-foot-3 Fritz, who averages a team-high 15.6 points and 9.4 rebounds. “I feel like this year we’ve been very locked in on practices, and when we go through scouting reports, people are very locked in, very understanding of what needs to be done.”

The Cougars showed that last week at Hutchinson when they rallied from a nine-point deficit in the second half to escape with a 42-40 road victory.

“Hutch was a really big game. The fourth quarter was probably the best game of basketball we’ve ever played as a team,” said Jordan, adding that the improvement is no accident.

“The coaches changing their momentum also made us change our momentum,” she said. “I think we hold each other accountable a lot more. Instead of thinking we’re going to hurt each other’s feelings, we tell each other how it is, and we take it and put it into our games.

“They’re expecting more and holding us more accountable instead of sugar-coating things.”

Ebert gives the players credit, and especially the seniors, for raising expectations.

“I think the girls know it’s their last season, so they want to go out the right way,” he said. “We’ve seen them kind of step up on their own a little bit in practice and in games, knowing that it’s the last opportunity they get to wear the green and gold and play for South High.”

“So, it hasn’t been something as coaches we’ve had to force on them. They’ve kind of taking it on themselves, and we’ve got some good, quiet leaders in that group that have led by example.”

Fritz and Jordan are joined in the starting lineup by senior guards Brylee Moss and Elle Barth, along with sophomore guard Kyla Hamel. The top reserves are seniors Sophie Daily, Isabelle Maxton, Lauren Crow and Promyce McNeal, though McNeal’s season may be over with a knee injury.

While Fritz remains the focal point on offense — she had 17 points and 17 rebounds despite facing a box-and-one and double teams in the low post — the Cougars now have enough perimeter threats to make opponents pay.

In addition to Jordan, who no longer is just an outside shooter, Moss is the top 3-point threat while averaging 6.1 points, followed by Hamel at 4.8. Barth is the designated defensive stopper.

But it all starts in the middle.

“I think the girls have settled into where our first look is inside the paint, whether it’s Paityn or Izzy Maxton off the bench,” Ebert said. “The one thing Paityn has developed, even throughout this season, is her ability to pass out of the post.”

The Cougars need just one victory to match last year’s last year’s total, when they finished at 10-10, and the high-water mark for the senior class was an 11-10 record two years ago.

Suddenly, given their early success, the bar is now much higher.

“I think we’re all realizing that this is our last go-round, so we need to make it count,” Fritz said. “Our mentality is it’s our last chance.”

“I feel like this year, (the Class 5A state tournament) is our end goal. No one is thinking of being done soon. I think our chances are pretty high if we keep going in the same direction we are now.”