Seven Lakes has been focusing on playing at their highest level.

For the Spartans, it’s not about their opponent, it’s not about what stage they are on and it’s not about any external factors. For the Spartans, the only focus is on meeting their own standard.

It worked to overwhelming success through the second half of District 19-6A, as Seven Lakes went on a run on their way to clinching a co-district title and that level of play showed up again on Tuesday, as the Spartans kicked off their playoff run with a huge 97-48 win over Ridge Point, advancing to the area round on the back of one of their biggest wins of the year.

“Tonight was a great feeling,” said senior point guard Shreya Jategaonkar. “We really wanted to let people know that we are here and we are a good team that can compete with anyone. That’s what we came out to prove tonight and I think we did that. This is a team that can make a run.”

It was Ridge Point that had the hot start to the game, going up 11-8 early, but the Spartans took a quick timeout and after some encouraging words from the coaching staff Seven Lakes went on a big run, going up 25-11 after the first quarter and increasing that to 55-21 at half.

“It was a slow start and it’s been a week since we’ve played so we just reminded them about playing to our standard and not to our opponent,” said Seven Lakes head coach Doug Watson. “We weren’t getting rebounds we needed, we were letting them get second chances and there were just things we had to do better. Once we started getting inot our game we got to where we needed to be.”

Once the Spartans took the lead they never looked back, they increased their lead in the third quarter to 77-40, continuing to pull away even with backups in in the fourth quarter.

The offense clicked like it has been all season for the Spartans in the game. That part of the floor has been easy for Seven Lakes and players feed off of each other on the offensive end.

“This team really depends on each other and we’ve made sure it’s not a one man show,” Jategaonkar said. “One man shows, no matter how good that one player is, eventually they get beat. This team has so many people that can score and we pick each other up when someone isn’t at their best, which is going to happen. No one is selfish on the floor and that’s what makes us so good.”

The Spartans advance to play Jersey Village in the area round Friday 7 p.m. at Bridgeland. The Spartans advanced to the area round last season where they fell to Memorial and will be looking to make a further push this year.

“We talk a lot about our level of play and never playing up or down to anyone,” Watson said. “It’s all about our standard, we can’t play to anything else. We have to go out there and play our best game, when we do that we’ll be just fine no matter who we play.”