Jefferson County teams 4-14 in district play

One by one, Festus seniors Zach Bey, Brendon Neel, Ryan Yuengel and Logan Bone slipped through the locker room door and dragged themselves down the hallway at the north end of T.J. Foulon Fieldhouse. Cody Roberts was the last to leave.

Thursday had been a tough night for the five Festus seniors.

The same was true for De Soto’s small senior group. Tough night. Very tough.

“I’ve got some boys in there who are pretty upset,” De Soto Coach Allen Davis said. “There are seniors in there who have put six to 10 years into this.”

The Dragons wandered out of their locker room in twos and threes, then came back, looking a bit lost. The players and coaches stepped back in the locker room for one last time. When they left a few minutes later, it was as a group, seniors in the middle. Eyes were red.

And that was how the basketball season ended for Jefferson County’s two best boys teams. Both were knocked out of the Class 4 district tournament at Park Hills Central in Thursday’s semifinals, Festus a 59-38 loser to North County and De Soto a 75-66 loser to Farmington.

Festus and De Soto weren’t alone. Far from it.

Fourteen county teams saw their seasons end last week. The area teams’ postseason record last week was 4-14. The Seckman girls and the Festus, De Soto and Seckman boys each posted a win; the others all were one-and-done.

In a tightly bunched tournament at Park Hills Central, De Soto and Festus had hoped for better. De Soto was the No. 3 seed and Festus the No. 4 seed.

“We knew we had a chance to beat them. We knew we could do it,” De Soto senior John Krodinger said.

Festus was certain it could do it, too. Their semifinal was a rematch of a game they had won handily just nine days earlier. They had hammered North County 76-50 in that district tuneup – and were hoping to do it again.

“I think it made us a little overconfident,” Tigers Coach Shawn Erickson said.

Overconfident probably was a bad plan. But there certainly was some justification for confidence.

Festus and De Soto shared the Jefferson County Conference title. They had played particularly well down the stretch. Festus won 13 of its last 16 games going into Thursday’s test against North County and had averaged 69 points during that stretch. De Soto had won seven of eight and averaged 68 points.

Adding to the titles, the wins, the scoring, was the fact Festus and De Soto had pegged their games to a couple of the area’s top players – Roberts at Festus and Krodinger at De Soto are arguably the JCC’s top seniors. Roberts, a 6-foot-3 forward, was the JCC’s player of the year in 2008-09 and did nothing to lose that designation in 2009-10. As for Krodinger, the 6-3 guard scored more than 1,100 points in his career and turned himself into a rebounding machine, collecting a JCC decade-best 345 boards this winter while helping De Soto earn a piece of the title for the second time in three years.

For everything Roberts and Krodinger did for their teams in the last 80 games or so, they couldn’t get things in gear Thursday. Roberts scored just five points, Krodinger only two.

Trouble made its way up and down both teams’ lineups.

“I couldn’t get all five going at the same time,” Erickson said.

While they weren’t sharp, Festus and De Soto both managed to stay in the game into the second half. Until North County scored twice in the last six seconds of the third quarter, Festus trailed by only seven, 39-32. De Soto was within six, 52-46, in the opening minute of the fourth quarter.

Even as the game slipped away in the fourth quarter, De Soto’s Davis kept thinking there was a chance.

“I thought we’d get back into it,” he said.

It didn’t happen. Not even close.

After a season of wins and titles, this was a tough finish. And it was toughest of all on the seniors who hoped for both better and more.

“It’s definitely rough after putting in four or five years of playing all the time,” Krodinger said. “I already miss it.”

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