Hickman was within one at halftime, but Hazelwood Central put the game away.
Most teams consider playing at home an advantage. For Hickman basketball coach Jim Sutherland, playing at home is a disadvantage and a factor in the Kewpies’ 67-51 loss to Hazelwood Central on Tuesday.
Sutherland said playing well at home is a frequent problem for his team.
“We have not played too well for two years at home,” Sutherland said. “If you can look in the score book and find a ballgame where we played well at home in the last two years, I’d like to see it.”
Players and coaches said playing at home has added pressure.
“It’s tough because you want to do well,” senior guard Taylor Florence said. “Your friends and your family are here. It is just a different crowd. When you are playing on the road, you are playing against total strangers.”
Junior center Brandon King said the dead crowd hurt the team Tuesday night.
“When we play away games, we feed off the crowd,” King said. “It gives us emotion. When the crowd is dead, you are going to play dead.”
The Kewpies (2-4) were in the game until the second half. Going into halftime, Hickman trailed by one thanks to a last-second 3-pointer that sophomore Robert Heath banked in.
“I was tickled to death,” Sutherland said about his team only being down by one at halftime. “Here we are, one point down at halftime, and we shouldn’t have been in the ballgame. We missed layups, Taylor Florence didn’t knock the shots down, and we have to have him putting the ball in the hole when he has an open look.”
Florence said he saw things differently.
“We weren’t lucky, that is how we should be playing,” Florence said. “We just didn’t hold it all the way through.”
Hazelwood Central (5-0) started the third quarter on a seven-point run and went on to outscore the Kewpies 18-6 in the quarter.
“We had momentum going into halftime, and we came out sluggish,” Florence said.
King said he agreed.
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“We were sluggish in warmups too,” King said. “If you warm up sluggish, you play sluggish. We just didn’t come out with our best game.”
Sutherland said his team’s slow start in the second half cost the team.
“We’d come down, what did we do? Turn the ball over,” Sutherland said. “They would come down and score. What did we do? Turn the ball over. It is really hard to play if you don’t get shots at the goal and we didn’t.”
Sutherland said that one of the reasons for Hickman’s poor play could have been due to recent compliments the team has been given. The Kewpies placed second at the Blue Springs South Tournament.
“When someone tells you how great you are, look out,” Sutherland said. “You are in for a heck of a long night ... Someone told our guys ‘Hey you are really getting good.’ Well, you are good as your last game.
“We aren’t very good, are we?”
King led the Kewpies with 13 points and seven rebounds, while Florence and Heath had 11 points each. Hazelwood Central had three players with 16 points each.