After a week of long practices, Lawrence High’s girls basketball players are ready to show how much they’ve improved.

Both the Lions and Free State High’s girls basketball team will play in the Firebird Winter Classic at FSHS over the next three days.

“It’s like its own mini season,” LHS coach Jeff Dickson said. “Everybody goes into that tournament 0-0, and everybody is playing for a championship, so we’re excited about it.”

LHS (1-8) will face Wichita Heights (6-4) in the first round at 6:30 tonight. The Lions beat them in the fifth-place game at a tournament in Emporia last season for one of their signature wins of the year.

“That was one our high points of the season,” senior point guard Marissa Pope said. “So it would mean a lot to come in and beat them again, because we have the ability to do it.”

Though the Lions have struggled to win games this year, they’re confident that they’ve fixed some of their offensive and defensive mistakes since their last time on the court.

“You play this first stretch of the season, which is a fairly long stretch and sometimes you feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole,” Dickson said. “One problem pops up and you deal with it, then something else. Now we’ve had an extended period of time to work on everything and so hopefully when we come out to play, we’ll have solved some of those issues.”

The Firebirds (8-1, ranked No. 5 in Class 6A) will play Topeka West (0-10) at 3 p.m. today.

“Last week we went back to fundamentals because we had about 10 days off,” FSHS coach Bryan Duncan said. “We’ve had a lot of success so far. But we know people are gunning for us. We know all teams are getting better now, and we’ve got to focus on sticking to our strengths and really playing to our roles.”

The Firebirds have traditionally played well at their own tournament, winning their last championship in 2013. Not only do they get a boost playing on a familiar court, but they’re just happy not to be practicing.

“I like how we have three games in three days because I just really like playing games,” FSHS senior forward Hannah Shoemaker said. “It’s more fun just seeing how far we can go and seeing actually how strong our team is.”