Fayetteville Advances to State Title Basketball Game

W ith a gutsy performance Monday, this year’s Lions did something no Fayetteville boys basketball team has done in 84 years.

In a thrilling state semifinal game at Little River Academy Monday night the Fayetteville Lions beat Huckabay 71-67 to advance to Thursday’s 1A state title game at the Alamodome.

“These guys have worked their tails off to get here,” said Fayetteville head coach Jake Diggs. “The job’s not done, but I’m so proud of them – so proud.”

The Lions will play Turkey Valley (29-4 and last year’s state runner-ups) for the title Thursday. This marks the first time the Lions basketball team will play for state since the 1942 Fayetteville team, which lost to Slidell 32-22 in the Class B final.

“It means everything,” said Fayetteville senior Jack Schley of the historic nature of what they have done. “You see everyone here supporting us. This is something we’ve all talked about since we were little. We were going to be the ones to do it. We worked our butts off every day to get here.”

The Lions only had seven guys play Monday and five of them are seniors – Schley, Mason Fenhaus, Kole Schmitt, Kasen Kocian and Cole Jurecka.

“I’ve been dreaming about this since I was in middle school,” said Schmitt, who scored a team-high 20 points Monday. “Since the beginning of the year I knew we could go to state. It’s a great feeling. I’m so excited.”

But Fayetteville didn’t get to this historic level without some drama.

Things couldn’t have started off better for Fayetteville Monday.

For a Lions team that See broke the national record for three pointers in a game earlier this season with 40, it’s no surprise that long range shooting fueled them early.

The Lions (31-6) built a 16-point halftime lead, led by the sharp shooting of Kasen Kocian, who made five firsthalf three-pointers, and finished with 17 points.

“Kasen’s a great shooter, when he gets it going, it’s fun to watch,” Diggs said.

“Whenever I put the first two up, I knew I felt good,” Kocian said. “That last one I shot (a bank shot at the halftime buzzer), all glory to God right there.”

But after halftime it was a different story.

“It was about stopping them in transition and not giving up second chance points. It worked well in the first half. In the second half we got a bit complacent,” said Fenhaus, who scored nine. “But big free throws and turnovers ended it.”

In that second half Fayetteville survived foul trouble by two of their biggest players, Schley and Enoch Loafman, who both had to watch much of the second half with four fouls.

With them out, Huckabay cut that 16-point halftime lead to just six points with five minutes left in the game.

“Sitting on the bench in those moments, it’s terrible,” Schley said.

“That put us in a new spot that we haven’t been in,” Diggs said. “We’ve been good about foul trouble all year. Credit to Luke (Beseda) and Cole (Jurecka, who both came off the bench). They did their job and kept us afloat.”

When Loafman and Schley did return to the game, the momentum shifted back to the Lions who were just able to hold off Huckabay (36-3), which nailed a pair of threepointers in the game’s final 10 seconds.

“We fought the entire game, never gave up,” said Schley, who scored 16. “We were pretty hot from the threepoint line, so we kept shooting. We did whatever we had to on defense to get a stop.”

Huckabay had actually beaten Fayetteville by seven in a tournament game earlier in the season.

But not this time. “We knew we had to get back on defense, try to keep them off the boards, even though we didn’t do a very good job of that,” Diggs said. “Huckabay got a lot of offensive rebounds. They are such a good team and such a similar matchup. It could have gone either way. We play that game 100 times it would be 50-50, we just happened to get it tonight.”

Now the Lions return to the Alamodome, where all of these Fayetteville seniors went as sophomores, but lost big in the 2024 state semis.

“It feels great going back to the Alamodome,” said Kocian, who was on crutches and didn’t play in those 2024 state semis. “Ever since we went there two years ago, we’ve wanted to go back – and we are making it happen.”

And it’s that hunger to get back to the top that’s fueled this Lions team (many of which have tasted a state title as part of last year’s championship baseball team).

Now those five seniors have one more basketball game in their high school careers – and it’s a big one.

“It’s cool being around all these seniors and being able to hang around them,” said Loafman, who scored nine Monday and is the only non-senior starter on this Lions team. “It’s sad that it’s my last year with them. We want to make it count.”

“We’re excited for the opportunity,” said Diggs, of a title chance 84 years in the making.