The Fountain Hills High School boys basketball team built an identity on physical defense and smart ball control and used that identity to control the pace of nearly every game they played this year. The Falcons followed this formula for 26 games and won all 26 of them.

The Falcons played unlike themselves in the state playoff quarterfinals and ended their season in a 73-50 loss to No. 7 ALA – Ironwood. The Falcons may not have reached the state championship destination that they set for themselves, but they did everything their coaches asked of them on the journey along the way.

“We came out, not playing the way we normally play,” head coach Jeff Bonner said of the state showdown. “Turned the ball over, didn’t play physically to start that game, and those are things we do to set the tone. Not turning the ball over to get great looks for ourselves, and then playing physical defense is just staples that we’ve had all year, and from the first three minutes of that game, you could almost see that it was different in that one.”

The Falcons had two turnovers on their first four possessions, and they didn’t make a field goal for over five minutes. Senior Luke Bloedel made two free throws early, and then senior Aiden Logan made it 9-4 with two and a half minutes left to play in the first quarter.

Junior Keaton Ort assisted a Bloedel layup to make it 11-6, but then ALA hit their second three pointer in the quarter. ALA made two free throws with five seconds left, and senior Napherious Doka-Johnson assisted a buzzer beating three-pointer by Logan to make it 16-11 heading into the second quarter.

Senior Deisel Giger made both his free throws to start the second quarter, but the Falcons didn’t get another field goal until Ort made a two-point shot with 4:30 left. ALA continued to smother the Falcons with long-armed defenders, and they grew their lead to a season-high 11-point halftime deficit for the Falcons.

“We couldn’t get anything going,” Bonner said. “It almost seemed the whole first half, we couldn’t get into a flow offensively, which after you don’t flow for a whole half of basketball, its hard in the second half to go back to how you were supposed to be executing at the start when it didn’t work.”

The Falcons kept pace with the Warriors at the start of the third quarter, but they weren’t cutting into the lead. Ort scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half, and he could’ve had more in the third quarter. Ort made a beautiful floater over several defenders, but it was waived off because of a three-second violation.

Ort made two three-pointers in the fourth quarter, but ALA was shooting them from deep all night long. The Falcons made four three-pointers as a team, with three of them coming in the fourth quarter, and the Warriors made a three-pointer in every quarter and ended with twice as many makes.

“We were taking shots, we just weren’t making them,” Logan said. “They were making everything they shot.”

The Falcons were down 19 heading into the final quarter, and they cut it down to 13 with 20 fourth-quarter points. Bonner said he got all nine of his seniors in the game near the end to honor their work for the past four years.

“Each year we’ve gotten a little bit better and better,” Bonner said. “Maybe not going as far this year, but I have never been on a team that had an undefeated season. I have never, up to this point, had a region championship team, and that both has happened this year. For these guys, they have gotten better. They have raised the bar for the next graduating class.”

Logan had 17 points and was the only other Falcon besides Ort in double figures. Doka-Johnson scored seven points off the bench, and Bloedel and Giger each added six points. ALA’s 6’6” senior Corey Wood scored 28 points and willed the Warriors over the Falcons.

“They played very, very well all season long, and it was one game. One game where we just didn’t execute and do everything we had to do perfectly and just ended with that result,” Bonner said. “The seniors set the example so that every single team, if you ask me, could go undefeated.”

Bonner said that every player, especially his seniors, lived up to his expectations and followed “the Falcon way” of doing things. Even though the Falcons weren’t the most talented team in the state, they felt like they were the hardest-working team. Bonner said he was grateful that his players not only worked hard, but with nine seniors, he was impressed with how supportive they were of each other throughout the season and how they never complained about starting line ups or playing time.

“That’s why I adopted the Falcon Way of being,” Bonner said. “For this program, we have to be the hardest working team every single year if we want to even be in the talks of being good.”

The Falcons didn’t achieve all they wanted to, but they achieved more than most teams can manage. Multiple Falcons received honors at the end of the season, and The Times will have a season recap in next week’s edition.