Santa Maria, TX -- The Santa Maria Cougars are looking to make it back to the elite 8 for the second straight year. They're doing it with a young team still with plenty of playoff experience. The team feels their strong non district schedule prepared them for this very moment as they're set to face off against Hearne in tomorrow's regional semifinal at Falls City High School at 7pm.

"They're going to be a really good team. They're very athletic but again pre district we go to the corpus tournament and we see a lot of the San Antonio teams from bigger schools so we're hoping that it helped prepare us for what's going on tomorrow," said Santa Maria Head Coach Johnny Cipriano

"Hopefully get that dub. we want to make it back to the elite 8 and go far," said Santa Maria Small Forward Luis Otero.