It's cliche for coaches and players to say they want to be at their best during the postseason.
But it takes a certain focus and drive to actually make that happen and reap the rewards.
This past week's results for area basketball teams have shown what can be achieved when the lows of the regular season are used as tools to prepare for postseason play rather than a downhill path to an early end in defeat.
On Friday night at Rackers Fieldhouse, the Jefferson City Jays defeated the Helias Crusaders for the first time in 11 tries to win their first district championship since 2015.
Since that title, the Jays have had four seasons end with losing records, three of them concluding with a first-round loss in the district tournament.
This season, the Jays were 10-14 heading into the Class 6 District 9 Tournament.
Considering they lost eight straight games following a season-opening win at Sedalia Smith-Cotton and a three-game skid followed a Owensville Tournament championship, it wasn't a bad way to finish.
But Jefferson City wasn't finished.
The Jays won six of their last nine regular season games before defeating in-town rival Capital City in the district semifinals to set up a third matchup against Helias in the championship game.
In the end, it was Sterling DeSha dishing it to Michael Onunkwor for the go-ahead layup and Aaron Stallings keeping step-by-step with Desmond White to contest a potential game-winning 3-pointer.
"There's a lot of winnable games coming up, but can we keep them working hard?" Jays coach Tony Phillips said after a loss to Blair Oaks in the Fantastic Four Tournament at Fleming Fieldhouse. "That's the challenge for us coaches is make sure we come back with a 1-0 mentality."
Jefferson City lost to Helias the next day, and again the next month.
Then Jefferson City lost in the Lebanon Hall of Fame Classic against Logan-Rogersville, which is the fifth-ranked team in Class 5 and the District 11 champion.
That double-overtime loss proved to be a valuable defeat.
"I think they learned they can play with teams like that when we play the right way," Phillips said after the district semifinal win against Capital City.
The Blair Oaks Lady Falcons have also emerged from their roller-coaster season to claim a district championship.
From defeating California in overtime to take third in the Tri-County Conference Tournament and defeating St. James on a Bailey Rissmiller buzzer-beater to dropping eight of nine games to fall to 6-10 on the season, the Lady Falcons rose to win seven straight regular-season games and three more in the Class 4 District 9 Tournament.
Blair Oaks' defensive mindset gets a lot of credit for the turnaround. The Lady Falcons have limited opponents to 37.6 points per game during their 10-game winning steak.
"Once we came out of that, we said, 'Hey, we're going to be a zone team most likely," Blair Oaks coach Brandon Moore said after a 44-38 win against California. "We just stuck to it and the girls have done a good job of continuing to learn that."
While the third-seeded Lady Falcons celebrated Friday night's district championship win against top-seeded Fatima, Moore headed to the locker room to grab a poster the team made as a reminder of what they wanted to accomplish this season.
He held the sign that read, "Defeat is not an option" in the air and handed it off to the team as they relished in winning the team's first district title since the 2012-13 season.
It's the focus the Jefferson City boys and Blair Oaks girls basketball teams had following the low points in the season that leads teams at this point in the season to a path of success.