Iola head coach Luke Bycroft was almost out of answers Friday night as his team walked off the floor after another lackluster effort in a loss to a team with an inferior record.
It also just so happens that that team was rival Chanute and the one-win Blue Comets brought the pain Homecoming Night on their own court, winning 60-48.
The loss brings the Mustangs record to an even 6-6 as Iola loses its fourth of the last five games.
”It’s just silly,” Bycroft said. “And it’s in our heads. That’s what we talked about all week. This game was going to be won or lost in our heads. Whether or not we were willing to do things the right way and execute. We didn’t execute.”
It was apparent early that the Mustangs were in for a struggle.
The Mustangs allowed Chanute to open both the first and second quarters on 6-0 runs that set the Mustangs back.
In the first quarter, they evened things out with an 8-2 run before heading into the second quarter down four. Same deal in the second quarter as Chanute stretched their lead to as much as 10 before the Mustangs whittled to just four heading into halftime.
But a 9-2 run to start the second half signaled that whatever was plaguing them wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The Mustangs could hardly buy a bucket and with every miss and every turnover, the Blue Comets slowly built their lead.
“It didn’t matter what we ran, we couldn’t run anything right,” Bycroft said. “We tried running set plays and we couldn’t throw the pass right, we tried our base offense and that didn’t work. The only thing we could do is pass to wide open shooters and that’s the easiest thing you can do but even with that we were slow on the ball rotations.”
One of the few things the Mustangs had going for them was senior forward Evan Sigg who fought his way for every one of his 16 points and 9 rebounds including eight offensive rebounds.
“Evan was an animal with effort,” Bycroft said. “(Assistant Coach Nick McNaulty) said that there was only one man at times versus their entire team and that was Evan. He did not want to lose. We need a whole team full of the same type of heart.”
Sigg also had to deal with his partner on the block Ethan Holloway being all out of sorts thanks to early foul trouble.
