Kansas City, Mo. — Free State High boys basketball coach Jack Schreiner, whose Firebirds are off to their worst start in school history, must be pulling out his hair in frustration.
"What's left of it," Schreiner quipped of his receding hairline. "This has not been a fun January at all. January just sucks. Maybe February will be better. I can hardly wait. When does February get here?"
Not soon enough for Free State, which fell to 3-9 after a heart-wrenching 47-46 loss to Hickman Mills on Friday night. The Firebirds, who have dropped seven of their last eight games, have been handed four one-point losses this season.
"I've been coaching for a long time," Schreiner said, "and this has got to be the most frustrated I've ever been in coaching ever. These are great kids. It's not that they're not giving me great effort.
"You know, I've got to believe that eventually we're going to turn this thing around and we're going to beat somebody. I just hope it's sooner rather than later. I'm not sure how much longer I can take it," he added.
Keith Wooden, the Firebirds' silky-smooth junior center, scored a team-high 16 points on 8-of-11 shooting, and senior swingman Andron Cruse added 12 points in the setback.
"We've got to put a full game together," Wooden said. "We played well in the second half. We just let the first half get away from us. We just have to put it together as a team. My personal performance doesn't matter."
Wooden led the team in scoring despite being tagged with his fourth foul in the first 14 seconds of the fourth quarter.
"It was big," said Wooden, who was sent to the bench for a while but didn't foul out. "I was getting easy shots inside. That's what we needed. I've just got to stop picking up stupid fouls late in the game."
Neither team could distance itself from the other all night long. The Cougars took game-high leads of six points twice in the first half while forcing the Firebirds to commit 12 turnovers.
Free State pulled within 22-19 at intermission as sophomore Dain Dillingham drove the lane and dished to fellow soph Cole Douglas, who buried a deep three-pointer at the buzzer.
The Firebirds came out fired up in the second half, taking their largest lead at 34-31 with 2:51 to play in the third quarter on one of Cruse's four three-pointers.
But Hickman Mills answered, grabbing leads of four 43-39, 45-41 and 47-43 three different times in the final 3:00. Cruse hit an uncontested trey in the closing seconds and the Cougars didn't even need to inbound the ball for the win.
"We're so close," Schreiner said. "We've been in every single game."
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