Jayton Beats Fayetteville in State Semis
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Fayetteville’s Brody Dooley finds a opening quickly closed by the defense of Jayton in Thursday’s state semifinal. Photo by Jeff Wick -
Jayton Beats Fayetteville in State Semis -
Left: Cash Smith fights for a rebound, and right, Easton Jaeger drives to the basket in Thursday’s state semifinals. -
The members of the Fayetteville Lions basketball team pose with their state bronze medals and state semifinalist trophy after Thursday’s game. -
Fayetteville’s Keagan Supak tries to get past a Jayton defender Thursday. Photos by Jeff Wick
It had taken the Fayetteville Lions 81 years to fight back to the state basketball tournament.
But the Jayton Jaybirds didn’t seem to care about that.
Jayton overwhelmed Fayetteville 65-26 in their 1A state semifinal in front of 2,424 fans at the Alamodome Thursday. Two days later Jayton defeated Benjamin 60-53 to win the 1A state title.
Fayetteville was making its first boys state basketball tournament appearance since 1943, and early on looked rattled by the more experienced Jaybirds.
Jayton jumped out to a 9-0 lead and never trailed in the game.
But Fayetteville fought back to trim the Jayton lead to just seven at halftime and five early in the third quarter.
Then Jayton really turned it on, outscoring Fayetteville 39-5 over the game’s final 14 minutes to win by 39.
“We knew Jayton was going to be very tough defensively,” said Fayetteville head coach Jake Diggs. “We had some good opportunities, but couldn’t get the ball in the hole. A lot of stuff didn’t go our way today ... They get their hands in the passing lane, they got a lot of offensive boards. We were one shot and done.”
Junior Easton Jaeger led Fayetteville in scoring with 10 points. Cash Smith and Mason Fenhaus each scored four.
Jayton’s sophomore Sean Stanaland scored 32 points.
“We knew coming into the game he would be tough to stop and we didn’t do a very See good job of stopping him,” Diggs said.
The Lions shot just 8 of 50 from the field in the game, including 3 of 26 from threepoint range.
By contrast, Jayton made 26 of their 58 shots.
Fayetteville’s fast-paced style, which had allowed them to break the 100-point mark four times this season, was consistency slowed down by Jayton’s defense.
“Fayetteville did a lot of stuff that really scared us,” said Jayton head coach Ryan Bleiker. “Our kids did a great job of getting back (on defense). I don’t know how many fast break points we gave up but it wasn’t a ton.”
Thursday’s game marked the end of the high school basketball careers for three Lions seniors, Keagan Supak, Jake Kubala and Cash Smith.
“Even though we didn’t win it was great to end our senior year here. Heck of an experience,” Supak said.
“What a great year it was. How blessed we were to get here,” Diggs said. “I’m going to miss the heck out of these seniors.”
The Lions ended their season with a 32-6 record, and join the 1942 and 1943 teams as the only boys basketball teams from Fayetteville to make it to state.
“It was great to do it for the community after so long,” Kubala said.
3/7/24
Jayton Boys 65, Fayetteville 26
Fayetteville 7 12 4 3 – 26 Jayton 13 13 10 29 – 65 Fayetteville scoring: Easton Jaeger 10, Lawson Fritsch 1, Keagan Supak 2, Brody Dooley 2, Mason Fenhaus 4, Kole Schmitt 3, Cash Smith 4.
Record: Fayetteville ends its season with a 32-6 record.