A lot of the players are the same, but there’s definitely something different about the Austin girls basketball team this season.

The Packers, who won only five games all last season, have rattled off a three-game winning streak to even their record at 3-3. The offense is much improved and the turnovers are down.

It seems that junior forward Babaye Oja and sophomore center Jenna Svoboda have turned into go-to scorers overnight, and Austin has only been blown out once this year — in a season opening loss at New Prague.

In their other two losses, Austin nearly came back to beat unbeaten Stewartville and they hung with Owatonna through most of the night.

The Packers will play another quality opponent when they host Simley Tuesday night at 6 p.m. in Ove Berven Gym.

You could see the Packers’ transformation from a team that wasn’t very competitive too a team that won’t go out quietly in their second game of the season when they fell down big to Stewartville early.

It looked like a classic letdown game where Austin just couldn’t get over the hump.

But the Packers came back with flurry and had the Tigers on their heels for much of the late minutes.

Now that they’ve piled up a few wins to gain some confidence, I fully expect to see the Packers play even better the rest of the year.

And the squad may look even more different then.