Elimination games are nothing new for Sunrise Mountain girls basketball team

Officially, the girls basketball region tournaments begin tonight.

For Sunrise Mountain, the playoffs might as well have started two weeks ago.

The Miners won their final three league games just to qualify for the Division I-A Southern Region playoffs. Sunrise Mountain (13-13) opens tournament play at 6 p.m. at Spring Valley (25-1).

“Every night has been like a playoff game,” Sunrise Mountain coach Chris Williams said. “We had to win just to keep going. We needed some help, too, but after we lost to Virgin Valley, I knew we couldn’t lose another game.”

The loss to Virgin Valley on Feb. 2 left the Miners at 4-7 in the Sunrise League, two games behind Desert Pines for fourth place and the final spot. Desert Pines’ upset win at Boulder City on Feb. 4 took away any wiggle room the Miners had left.

But Sunrise Mountain finished the season on a four-game winning streak, including a nonleague victory over Las Vegas, and won the tiebreaker over the Jaguars to claim the team’s second straight postseason berth.

“We just got tired of losing,” senior forward Tyrah Lee said. “We all came together, and we knew that if we didn’t win those games, we weren’t going to the playoffs. Everybody just stepped it up.”

Sunrise Mountain finished third in the Sunrise League last year, but lost in the first round of the Southern Region playoffs. Before last season, the team never had won more than seven games in a season.

“It feels good to make the playoffs again,” Lee said. “To be a senior and to go to the playoffs my last two years here, it feels like you’re making history.”

The deck seemed to be stacked against the Miners, who lost eight seniors to graduation last year and returned just three letter winners.

The Miners opened league play this season with games at Chaparral, at Boulder City and at Virgin Valley — the league’s top three teams — and went 0-3. They were 2-5 in the league at the midway point.

“We were searching for ourselves and still learning,” Williams said. “When you lose eight seniors, you lose that leadership, and early on we didn’t have that leadership. We needed someone to step up and take charge. We ended up finding leadership as a group.”

Sunrise Mountain also tightened its defense. The team has allowed more than 42 points just once in its past eight games and has held opponents to an average of 37.8 points during its current winning streak.

“Our communication is better,” senior guard Dejunique Jeffries said. “We talk a lot more, and we’re working as a team. Our teamwork has really improved.”

The Miners are hoping to mirror the run Desert Pines made last year, when it clawed into the playoffs at 6-20 overall and upset Sunset League champion Faith Lutheran and Western to claim a spot in the state tournament.

But getting past Spring Valley, which hasn’t lost to a Nevada team this season, won its first league championship in program history and set a school record for wins, is a huge task.

“The good part for us is our backs have been against the wall for two weeks,” Williams said. “As much as I would like to be the No. 1 seed and not have to worry about the last few games, I like to come out of the trenches fighting. We already have that intensity going. We don’t need to try to turn it up, it has been turned up.

“It has to be like any other game, but we have to play better than we have ever played.”

Contact reporter Bartt Davis at bdavis@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5230.