Marriotts Ridge boys basketball coach Marcus Lewis has a wish for the next three weeks and the coming state tournament.
What Lewis hopes is that by the time folks realize how good the Mustangs are, they will already have cleared a space in the school gym for a state championship banner.
"We've been under the radar all year, and we want to stay that way," Lewis said. "Nobody really knows about us, and that's good."
That anonymity is only temporary because Marriotts Ridge will have the No. 2 seed in Class 2A.
The Mustangs (18-4) have been draped with a cloak of invisibility all season, as they have hovered around the bottom of the polls, and for understandable reasons.
After all, who pays attention to a team that a year ago went 4-18, even if everyone returned? And what kind of awareness would you give to a team that doesn't have an abundance of height or a player who can jump out of the gym?
Add to that the fact that Marriotts Ridge, Howard County's newest high school, is in only its second year of varsity competition, and you get a team that could easily go unnoticed.
"It's just a matter of we're new," junior point guard Derek Coleman said. "Usually, when people ask me what school I go to, I say, 'Marriotts Ridge.' They say, 'Where's that?' Nobody really knows about us yet. It's just putting our name out in the public's mind this year."
To a degree, the Mustangs have succeeded in that objective, thanks in large part to an 11-game winning streak that got them into the top 15 last week. A four-point loss to Atholton on Feb. 11 knocked them out of the poll, but the winning streak helped land them in the middle of the race for the county championship.
The Mustangs have gone 11-2 in games decided by 10 points or fewer, an impressive turnaround from last season, when they dropped 10 such games. That not only suggests that the players have learned to win the close games, but more importantly, that they have learned to trust each other when things get tight.
"We've all just come together," said Kevin Seker, who starts alongside Coleman in the backcourt. "The last two years, we've really jelled, and it's been nice."
The Mustangs, though balanced offensively, take their cue from Seker, the All-County quarterback who led the football team to a winning season. The 6-foot senior leads the team in scoring at just over 21 points a game and is shooting 82 percent from the free-throw line while setting a good example for his teammates.
"He has been around since the beginning," Lewis said. "They [the players] do what we ask them to do, or they're not going to do it. Kevin's never been that type of young man. He carries himself very well, and, in my opinion, he's the Player of the Year in Howard County."
And Lewis, who launched the program at Marriotts Ridge after coming over from Oakland Mills, his alma mater, is a prime candidate for county Coach of the Year honors.
"He pushes us every day," said Kyle Williams, a junior forward, who, like Seker and Coleman, also plays football. "He knows what we expect from him and that we should be giving everything every day as hard as we can. That way, we're prepared for whatever happens next.'
For the Mustangs, the next step is negotiating the 14-team 2A region - which has more schools than any of the other 15 regions in the state. Nine of the schools in the region have previously won state titles, including River Hill, last year's 3A champion, and Prince George's County's Gwynn Park, the No. 2 team in The Washington Post's poll.
With nine players returning next season, the Mustangs perhaps should be content to dip a toe in the water this year and come back to make a big splash next season. Then again, there's plenty of space on the gym wall for a banner, and there's no better time to fill it than now.
"We have a good nucleus coming back, but this is the group," Lewis said. "This is the group that started it all for the school, so I'd like to see this group do something special. If that's winning the county title, fine. If we're fortunate enough to win a state title, fine. If not, it's been a good year."
milton.kent@baltsun.com