JEFFERSON TWP — Dave Peters and his young coaching staff set lofty goals for their inexperienced Knoch girls basketball team this season.

“They're so used to losing,” said assistant coach Rachel Doutt, a Butler graduate, “so we've been setting these goals like 15 wins and making the playoffs. We're trying to get them to believe in themselves and get more confidence.”

Believing and confidence have almost been foreign terms around the Knights in the past five seasons.

The program bottomed out last season with a 2-20 record. Knoch had gone just 21-68 in the four seasons before Peters, Doutt, Butler graduate Casie Cygan and Joe Wiest arrived before this season.

Also arriving was a talented freshman class led by forward Sarah Armahizer.

They all have heralded in the promise of much better days ahead.

Knoch is 6-7 this season and has its sights set on a playoff spot.

“We made four goals at the beginning of the year,” Peters said. “The first was to win the tip-off tournament, which we did; win the Christmas tournament, which we did; make the playoffs and then (win 15 games). If we get the last goal, that'll get us into the playoffs.”

Fifteen wins may be asking a lot of a team that features a starting lineup long on youth and short on varsity experience.

But that wasn't the point, Peters said. The point was to give the team something to strive for instead of languishing in another season heading nowhere.

“You have to have goals in everything,” Peters said. “They've worked so hard, these girls. They're probably not the most talented team I've ever been around, but the best team I've been around.”

Doutt and Cygan have added valuable and recent real-life experience.

Cygan was a star for the Butler girls basketball team and parlayed that to a record-setting career at La Roche College, where she won four conference titles in four seasons.

Doutt was her teammate at Butler for three seasons, all section championship for the Golden Tornado.

“I think they enjoy us coaching,” Doutt said. “They look up to is a lot.”

So much in fact, freshman guard Casey Kretzer gave Cygan a major compliment.

“They had to turn in papers like favorite food and stuff like that,” Cygan said. “(Kretzer) put me down as her favorite player.”

“Having them on the staff, they are young and they can relate to the girls,” Peters added. “All three of the coaches with me bring a lot of knowledge of the game. The losing had to stop. You have to bring in coaches who as players won to bring that winning atmosphere with them.”

Sophomore forward Carly Burdett, one of the holdovers from the 2-20 campaign last year, said she noticed and instant change with the coaching staff, Cygan in particular.

“She's added lots of encouragment. She knows how to make every situation easier by breaking it down for us,” Burdett said of Cygan. “She also added laughs because she knows how to calm us down when we are in intense situations.”

Knoch has had a knack of not folding late in games.

The Knights rallied from a big deficit to beat Highlands and also rallied from a fourth-quarter deficit to beat Deer Lakes.

Part of the team's resiliency has to do with their tight-knit relationship on the court.

And the coaches friendships as well.

“Me and Casie have been best friends for a long time, even before we started playing,” Doutt said. “So, this has been fun for us, too. We get to coach together and we're together all the time. The girls are really funny. A couple of them will come up to us and say, 'You and Casie are best friends, but me and her are best friends, too. You guys are just like us.' These girls are very close.”