Through the first two weeks of the season, the Southern Regional girls basketball team was 0-4 and had barely scored more than 30 points in just one of those games. And even though the Rams were stomped by Jackson Memorial, 71-34, in that one game on Dec. 29, it was an improvement over the loss dealt by the Jaguars in the first game of the season just 12 days earlier, when it was 69-27.

That was a sign of better things to come, even if many people surrounding the program couldn’t see it.