The Austin girls basketball team is hoping it can put forth another big time effort as it prepares for its first appearance in the Minnesota Class AAA State Girls Basketball Tournament since 2008.

The Packers (20-8 overall) beat last year’s state runner-up Northfield 62-50 to get to state and now they’ll have to beat the defending state champs if they want to keep going. Austin will take on No. 2 seeded Robbinsdale-Cooper (20-8 overall) in the Class AAA Quarterfinals in Maturi Pavilion at the University of Minnesota at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The Hawks play an up-tempo style of basketball that is similar to what Austin does.

“They’re super aggressive and we’re expecting full court man (defense),” Austin junior guard Colie Justice said. “We’ll probably practice with five of us against six or seven defenders to get ready for them.  We know they’ll be all up in our face. We’ve just got to have a couple of hard practices.”

RC has won 13 of its last 14 games and its lone loss in that stretch was a 94-92 overtime loss to Chanhassen, a Class AAAA school.

Austin junior center Kyra Walters said the Packers will have to come out ready and focused to pull off another upset.

“They’re guard heavy and they have really fast, good shooting guards,” Walters said. “They have one big post player that we have to worry about. We can outrun them on the court and that will be our biggest thing towards winning the game.”

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Read all about the Packers’ trip to state in a special pull-out section, available in Wednesday’s Herald.