Shawnee ? It seems the only thing the Firebirds have to fear is the Firebirds themselves.

After taking an eight-point lead with 2:56 remaining, Free State High committed four turnovers and didn’t make another shot in succumbing to Shawnee Mission Northwest, 43-42, in boys basketball Thursday night at SMNW.

“We just didn’t take them serious,” FSHS coach Jack Schreiner said after seeing the Firebirds’ four-game winning streak snapped. “I don’t know what the deal is. It’s not that we’re not playing hard. We just don’t think. We just do some dumb things at times.”

After trailing by as many as eight points in the second quarter, Free State (7-10 overall, 3-5 Sunflower League) fought back to take a 40-32 lead on a jumper by junior point guard Neil Dougherty. But the Cougars (4-12, 1-8) closed on an 11-2 run to steal a victory.

No one was more frustrated following the loss than Dougherty, who had two turnovers in the final 1:16.

“Disappointed,” said Dougherty, who was held to four points on 2-of-11 shooting. “I feel like I personally let the team down with a couple plays I could have made. We just got outplayed by a team we should have beat.”

Neither team exactly sizzled from the floor. The Firebirds were 15-of-44 shooting (34.1 percent), including 0-for-14 on three pointers. SM Northwest was 16-of-39 (41.0) and hit two of three treys. The Cougars made nine of 12 free throws while Free State was 12-of-20, thanks to a 9-of-12 performance by junior center Keith Wooden.

Wooden scored a game-high 23 points despite being pounded and pestered all night by Northwest’s diamond-and-one zone defense.

“Keith came to play,” Schreiner said. “Keith, I thought, did a great job. I’m really, really pleased with what he did and I was pleased with the way we looked to get him the ball, too. We’ve seen that thing all year long and we’re probably going to continue to see it.”

Neither the Firebirds, nor Cougars are strangers to close games Free State suffered its fifth one-point defeat while SM Northwest had lost by double-digits just three times.

“It’s something we’ve gone through all year,” SMNW coach Ben Meseke said of the thriller. “Early in the year we had young kids and now they’re experienced and now they’ve experienced something neat and new. Hopefully it will carry over.

“That’s a good team we beat tonight. They’ve been on a roll.”

That roll Free State had won four straight and five of seven coming in actually hurt the Firebirds, who admitted they might have overlooked struggling SM Northwest.

“Yeah, I think so,” said FSHS sophomore Dain Dillingham, who scored eight points off the bench. “I think we thought coming in they were last in the league and we were going to have an easy game. But we should know by now we don’t have any easy games.”

Both squads struggled out of the blocks as the Cougars claimed a 13-6 lead after the first quarter, and an 18-16 edge at halftime.

The Firebirds had their moments in the second half, including Wooden’s ally-opp dunk actually, it appeared senior guard Damian Harden’s three-pointer went in just before Wooden arrived and Harden’s steal and layup to give Free State a 33-28 with 5:36 left.

“That game pretty much sums up the season for us,” Schreiner said. “We play well in spurts and terrible at other times.”

Free State continues its seven-games-in-18-days tour with a girls-boys doubleheader Saturday at Leavenworth, starting with the girls’ game at 5 p.m.

“We’ve got to regroup, we’ve got to come back and we’ve got to beat Leavenworth,” Schreiner said. “It’s as simple as that. We were on a little bit of a roll and we let it go. We just let it get away.

“We’ve got to get back in the saddle, we’ve got to start fresh and we’ve got to get going.”