Biddeford’s Gabby Silva shoots between Abby Stackpole, left, and Aubrianna Hoose of Oceanside. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Biddeford senior Gabby Smith can remember her sophomore year, when the girls basketball team went 0-18 and played in front of largely empty stands.

“We didn’t really have many people come to our games,” she said. “It was mainly our parents.”

Things are different now, as Biddeford prepares to face Caribou in the Class B state final a week after winning the South regional title in front of a raucous crowd at the Portland Expo.

“Looking at all of the fans that we had, it’s a surreal feeling,” she said. “It really hit me at the Expo, seeing everyone in black and orange. It made me feel so happy.”

There’s been a drastic shift in Tiger Town. Biddeford used to be at the bottom of Class A, with a record of 45-172 from 2010-11 to 2022-23 and just one state tournament appearance, in 2022, when every team qualified in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, however, the Tigers entered the season with high hopes. With the arrival last year of two AAU players in Jordyn Crump and Anna Smyth, followed by the debut this season of a heralded freshman class led by Mia Mariello and twin sisters Natalia and Gabby Silva, a spotlight was fixed on Biddeford that hadn’t been there before. There was hype. There was attention. There were expectations.

“People have been saying for years they expect us to win four state championships in a row,” Gabby Silva said. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

And it was there from the start. Even before the first game of the season, the Tigers heard chatter, everything from complaints about their playing in Class B — Biddeford is a Class A school in terms of enrollment, but has played the last two seasons in Class B because of a Maine Principals’ Association’s rule allowing struggling programs to move down one class — to anticipation surrounding the arrival of freshmen who, while playing for a Biddeford middle school travel team, won three straight New England championships.

“Everyone was talking about how good Biddeford was going to be,” Natalia Silva said. “It was kind of exciting, but … we had to live up to their expectations, too.”

Coach Jeannine Paradis heard the talk and tried to make practices an oasis from the attention.

“I really tried to focus on, as soon as they come in here, it’s us,” Paradis said, gesturing toward the empty gym following a practice. “We leave everything outside that needs to be outside. … We really didn’t talk about the type of pressure that the coaching staff was feeling or the players were feeling, because we know that people in the community were talking and have been talking.”

Paradis quickly found out she didn’t have to worry about distractions.

Biddeford teammates cheer after Jordyn Crump drained a 3-pointer against Spruce Mountain. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

“I’m sure they felt it,” she said, “but these kids play with amazing composure and poise. It might take a bomb going off to rattle us.”

There were still bumps in the road. A loss to Brunswick in the third game dented some confidence, and the Tigers dropped back-to-back games against Mt. Ararat and Marshwood, unable to hold a fourth-quarter lead in the latter game. But behind most of the losses was a single cause — and a preventable one.

“We had growth in understanding that we can’t just reach and slap at the ball, because officials call fouls in high school,” Paradis said. “We learned to actually play defense with our feet. We could still play hard and in your face and aggressive and tenacious. But we didn’t always need to swat at the ball.

“Four of our five losses, if you took away that foul line, we (would have) won. But we put teams on the foul line, and we either didn’t get there or we didn’t make our foul shots. … (I said) ‘Tell me who wins if we take away the foul line?’ They’re like ‘We do.’ ‘OK. So let’s fix that.'”

The lesson stuck. In the loss to Marshwood, Biddeford allowed 16 free throws. Over three playoff games against Wells, Spruce Mountain and Oceanside, the Tigers allowed only 24 total free throws.

No longer beating itself, the team that played the whole season under pressure was able to flourish.

“We come alive during the high-pressure situations. That’s when we thrive,” Natalia Silva said. “Instead of being nervous, we are excited about it. We take it as an opportunity to show other people what we can do.”

From the start, those people have been watching.

“I knew we were going to have attention, and there was going to be a lot of talk around us,” Smyth said. “I was just hoping that we could live up to the expectations. And I think, so far, we’ve met, if not exceeded them.”