CIF STATE BASKETBALL FINALS : Bella Vista Playing a Different Tune : Division II girls: Superstition aside, Northern California champion has turned its game around during season’s second half.

Her rendition of chopsticks precedes conditioning. Heart & Soul picks up where pick and rolls leave off.

The Fair Oaks Bella Vista girls’ basketball team concerns itself with some pretty peculiar things these days, and it’s piano playing that has recently captured the interest of the Broncos.

This musical instrument has become an unlikely tool of success for Brea-Olinda’s opponent in the Division II State final, which will be held at 6:15 p.m. Friday at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

Under a laugh muffled by embarrassment as much as anything else, Bella Vista’s Amy Smith divulges the latest ingredient in her team’s recipe for success.

“This is going to sound funny,” said Smith, Bella Vista’s star center. “But after our three league losses, I was waiting for a ride. Before (a teammate) picked me up, I started playing the piano.”

Smith won’t attempt Handel or Bach; lullabies are more her speed.

“Little kids songs,” she said. “It’s not like I’m good or anything. It doesn’t take long, two or three minutes, and I only know the beginning of a few songs.”

But every day at practice, Bella Vista Coach Jorie Baer’s inquiring mind wants to know.

“She asks me, ‘Amy, did you play the piano today?’ ” said Smith, who admits the ritual sounds bizarre, but can’t seem to stop.

Not that her teammates would let her.

“The girl that picks me up won’t let me leave until I finish,” she said.

When the last chord fades, the attention of Smith and her Bronco teammates turn to the subtleties of basketball and the run for their first State championship, none of which seemed possible a few short months ago.

During the first half of the Capital Athletic League season--the league is considered one of the toughest in the state--Bella Vista wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire. Losses to Sacramento Grant (by one point) and Grass Valley Nevada Union (in overtime) were warm-ups to the ultimate insult: a two-point loss to cross-town rival Fair Oaks Del Campo after the Broncos were up by 12 at the half.

There Bella Vista was, with four losses--the Broncos had dropped a game to highly regarded Colfax earlier in the season--and the realization that history would repeat itself if the Broncos didn’t turn things around immediately.

“The past two years we lost in the second round of (Sac-Joaquin Section) playoffs, and we were expected to do better than that,” Smith explained. “When we lost those three games, it was like, ‘Oh, they’re not going to do anything (the rest of the season) now.’ ”

Especially grating was a one-point loss at the buzzer to Roseville Oakmont in 1992.

“That’s one shot that they remember. It came off the backboard and fell in,” Baer said. “They were bound and determined not to let that happen again.”

A year later, Bella Vista answered its detractors by winning the Division II section championship, its first since 1986, which it stretched into its first Northern California championship three games later.

“A lot of people said those three losses were a turning point,” said Baer. “If you’re going to lose, you want to do it then, not now. Those games toughened us up.”

Interestingly, the league losses affected the Bronco faithful more than the players, who never panicked during the dry spell. Smith credited Baer for direction during the low period, but the inspiration came from within.

“She helped, but we had to decide for ourselves how far we wanted to go,” Smith said. “It was disheartening to lose them, but we felt we’d be able to come back. We knew the season wasn’t over for us.”

Mental, rather than physical, deficiencies were the culprit, something Smith said was relatively easy to fix. In its first game of the league’s second round, Bella Vista rebounded with a strong performance against a weaker opponent.

“We set some pretty high goals,” Smith said of her team’s return. “We wanted to finish the rest of the season without a loss, and we came out really strong against a weaker team.

“To us, that proved we could stay at that level. The next time we met the teams we had lost to, we knew we could keep pushing. We proved to ourselves we were capable of playing at that level consistently.”

And that’s music to anyone’s ears.