As it prepares to enter the Class 3 District 8 competition at Winfield on Saturday, the Wright City basketball team is optimistic about its chances to secure a postseason victory.

While the Wildcats are coming off a lopsided defeat to Clopton on Friday, Coach Dan Friedel is viewing the season as a whole and recognizing the energy with which his team is playing right now. He says his young group aspires toward being like the same Hawks team that defeated them.

“They’re well coached and have some tradition as a good program,” said Friedel. “That’s kind of where we’re trying to get to. I was happy with our effort on Friday.”

Wright City enters districts with both its best record and seed in a several years. The Wildcats will match up as the fifth seed against fourth-seeded Bowling Green.

“We’re really trying to get healthy,” said Friedel. “We’re down a few girls right now with a broken ankle and other injuries girls are recovering from. Despite that, we’ve been getting out, playing hard and competing the whole time.”

The Wildcats lost to Bowling Green by one on the road earlier in the season, and Friedel believes his team has developed considerably since that setback.

“We kind of feel like we’re a better team now than we were when we played them the first time,” said Friedel. “It was really low scoring. We ended up coming back to in the fourth quarter to take the lead. I think we’re a lot more comfortable now than we were three games into the season.”

Playing competitively against a program with a long history of success gave the Wildcats and early boost of confidence as they entered the season.

“Figuring our what our standard was at the beginning of the season was important,” said Friedel. “Once we figured that out, we’ve been focused on playing to that level every game. We didn’t set a goal to get a certain amount of wins. Our goals were effort, focus and improvement every day.”

Wright City has looked to freshman Jasmine Simpson for leadership on offense.

“Jasmine has been pretty consistent for us all year as a scorer,” said Friedel. “She’s done a really good job stepping in as a young player.”

The Wildcats have been able to diversity their offensive portfolio over as the season has progressed.

“Early in season we needed somebody to step up and make some jump shots,” said Friedel. “Early on everything we were scoring was right at the basket. We weren’t hitting any outside shots and that makes it really hard as the season goes on."

Friedel says Kelsey Capstick has recently stepped up over last few weeks to begin hitting some of those mid and long-range shots to diversify.