Fresh off their first win of the season, the fifth-seeded Fayette Falcons lost a heartbreaker to sixth-seeded Sturgeon Saturday afternoon, 41-39, in a bruising consolation final in the New Franklin Tournament.

After trailing by six late in the game, Fayette scored five points in the last 90 seconds, culminating with a 3-point swish from junior Parker LaValley with 25.1 seconds left to come within one point of the lead. Five seconds later, the Bulldogs sank the second of two free-throw chances to extend their lead to two points. A mid-lane jump shot in the final seconds by senior Charles Alexander bounced away, ending Fayette’s chance to bring home a trophy.

“There’s nobody else I would rather have taking that shot,” said Fayette coach Brandon Friebe about his team’s final shot. “I’ve seen him make that 100 times. The shot selection was good. We had an opportunity to knock it down. But that’s not what got us beat. What got us beat was missed free throws and missed layups up to that point.”

Fatigue from a long week is often evident in the third game of a tournament. Tired legs result in missed 3-pointers and free throws. The Falcons made just six of 14 shots from the line in Saturday’s consolation final. Friebe credited those misses with the two-point loss.

“We put ourselves in a position to win the game. Missed free throws and missed layups are what cost us that game,” Friebe said. “Had we made our free throws and layups, we would have won that game by 15 points. We did not do a good job of finishing at the basket and making free throws.”

The two teams kept pace amid a low-scoring first quarter, with Sturgeon edging ahead 8-7 after one period. The Bulldogs pulled farther ahead by six at halftime, sinking a couple of threes in the second quarter while holding Fayette to just two field goals and 3-for-6 free-throw shooting.

Fayette’s big man in the paint, senior Payton Oeth, scored five of his game-high 13 points in the first half as Fayette labored to get the ball inside.

“We struggled to get the ball to Payton in the first half,” Friebe said. “But we made some adjustments at halftime, and I thought our guys did an incredible job of making those adjustments.”

Those adjustments paid off in the third quarter as Oeth banked eight points to lead his team in a comeback that cut the lead to just one point with two minutes left in the period. But Fayette wouldn’t score for the next four minutes, allowing Sturgeon to pull ahead by five with six minutes left in the game.

Junior point guard Colton Cross broke the spell, scoring all of Fayette’s points in a 7-2 run that tied the game at 34-34 with 3:46 left to play.

Sturgeon answered with six straight points before sophomore Blake Braden scored to stop the bleeding. LaValley then delivered a 3-pointer to make it a one-point game with 25 ticks left on the clock.

“He needed that, and we needed that. He had not been shooting the ball well the last couple of nights. To hit that three is big for him and it’s big for our team,” Friebe said.

Ultimately, Fayette couldn’t catch up before time expired, sending the Falcons home empty-handed.

Oeth was Fayette’s only scorer to finish in double figures. Cross added nine points, all scored in the second half, and Alexander posted eight. LaValley, Braden, and Thad Quint each scored three points.

“Sturgeon game planned us well. They did a good job of taking away what we like to do,” Friebe said.

Junior Devin Smith led six Sturgeon scorers with 10 points.

After a tough start to the season with a few near-misses, the winless Falcons were poised to come out of last week’s tournament with two wins. Instead, Fayette enters a busy five-week stretch with a 1-8 overall record. But Friebe is optimistic, eying several games his team should win as the Falcons play three-game weeks over the next five weeks, leading up to the district tournament.

On Monday the Falcons lost another close game, 63-61, at Pilot Grove. Fayette returns home on Thursday to host the talented Christian Fellowship Knights, who defeated the home team to place third at the New Franklin Tournament on Saturday. Fayette fell to CFS by 10 points in the first round of the tournament. The Knights are making some noise in their first year as members of the Missouri State High School Activities Association.

On Monday, the Falcons host North Callaway for Pink Out night before jumping headfirst into Central State 8 competition against New Bloomfield on Tuesday.