Behind the tears, there were smiles. A little laughter even trickled forth.

Redmond High’s boys basketball players knew they had achieved something special and their emotions perfectly told the story.

The Mustangs stayed glued to their home court last Saturday evening a half hour after experiencing a season-ending loss to Issaquah, getting in one last hang-out in their green-and-gold uniforms and doling out hugs to each other, their parents and the coaching staff.

“It was, for sure, the best time I’ve ever had in my entire life,” said Riley Brown, one of three seniors on the squad. “We started off 3-13, and I felt like the whole season we weren’t playing up to our potential. Honestly, we had to have our backs up against a wall to make it happen — and we finally played the way we should.”

After losing to Issaquah (83-40) in the first round of the 4A KingCo Tournament on Feb. 12, the Mustangs reeled off three consecutive loser-out victories over Bothell (61-58 in overtime), Newport (50-47) and Skyline (58-56) before falling again to Issaquah (84-54), one of state’s top teams, for the No. 2 seed to state regionals.

Junior Kevin Carpenter led the Mustangs (6-15 overall) in scoring in the three wins with 19, 16 and 18 points, respectively. Brown scored 14 against Skyline, a game in which Redmond trailed 26-23 at halftime and outscored their opponent 20-12 in the fourth quarter. Junior Justin Harshman tallied 16 against Bothell and senior Jake Talbot notched 11 against Newport.

“(The season) means so much, how we came from so far down to coming back and making a run in the playoffs and bringing some life and playoff basketball back to Redmond. It was such a fun journey,” Harshman said.

In 2009, Redmond finished fifth in the state, and during his Mustang days, current head coach Brian Lund (a 1991 graduate) played on three state-tournament teams, including the squad that lost to Garfield in the 1991 title game.

Lund said as the Mustangs secured each playoff win, the large, noisy crowd of students and community members returned to Redmond High — where the boys and girls 4A KingCo Tournament took place — for the following games.

The coach added that it was an emotional string of games that took the Mustangs to the edge of a state berth.

“It wasn’t any play calling by me, it was the kids that brought the crowd through their energy and what they did,” said Lund, as friends waited to speak to him after the final game. “It inspires the younger kids that want to be part of it. To me, that was the biggest victory is they brought some sense of culture back to this whole thing. I have parents of alumni that I played with coming back to just watch the games. I didn’t tell them we had a game, but they’re hearing about it through the community.”

Before the tournament, Lund didn’t roll out any schemes that were tailored to each opponent. Lund said they played each team straight up, utilized a man-to-man defense and let the cards fall where they may.

After losing its last game of the regular season to Skyline, the coaches gathered the squad in the team room and said they’d like to get another shot at Bothell, Newport and Skyline in the playoffs.

“Just one of them one more time — we got to play all three and beat them,” Lund said with a grin.

Talbot, who exited the locker room arm in arm with Brown, said the No. 1 lesson he learned from this season is that champions rise to the occasion.

“We pulled together, we talked to each other, we decided, ‘You know what, we’ve got to do this, we can’t keep messing around.’ We were honest with each other and took down some teams,” Talbot said of the team discussion following the Mustangs’ three-win league season. “(We had) confidence and belief in ourselves and belief in each other. Each individual on the team is going to do their job and pull through for everyone else.”

Talbot and Harshman said the team’s goal this season was to make the playoffs and reach for a spot to state. There was never any doubt, they just had to ride out the regular season and go for it.

The talk in the locker room following the first Issaquah playoff loss went something like this, according to Talbot: “It was just, ‘Why not? Why not us? Why can’t we do this?’ We won three games, and no one (opponents) ever would have believed that we would have won any of those games. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. This is one of the most amazing weeks of our lives.”

Added Harshman: “Just never give up. You never know what’s going to happen.”

As the Redmond High gym slowly cleared out last Saturday, Lund looked around and nodded at a few people with a smile. It seemed as if he wasn’t ready to go home yet — he wanted to soak up a few minutes more of Mustang basketball.

“Basketball is 90 percent confidence. For the (10) kids that are returning, we’ve got kids now that have the experience,” Lund said. “You don’t get confidence because your dad says you’re a good player… you get good confidence because you experienced stuff like this. You’ve been through it and they know they can do it now. They’re already (saying), ‘Coach, what are we doing tomorrow?'”