The Falcons ran into a hot-shooting Slater team in the district quarterfinals and couldn’t match the Wildcat offense in a 78-60 loss on Tuesday.

Cale Polson led Fayette with 14 points in his final game.

Tyler Bartholomew made two of his four 3-point attempts, but the Falcons were just 4-21 as a team, about seven percentage points under their season average. 

Slater, on the other hand, was 12-24 from outside and shot almost 52 percent from the field overall against the seventh-seeded Falcons.

“We’re in an extremely tough district,” Fayette coach Jon Bishop said.

“There are teams in our conference that are below .500 and they’re a three or a four seed in their district. It’s just the way it drew. We’ve got a really tough team and that was a really tough opponent. I thought our gameplan was sound, though early we had a few miscues.”

Neither team missed a shot during the first three minutes of play. Fayette was 2-2 with three turnovers. Slater turned the ball over on its first three possessions and then made three 3-pointers in a row.

Despite the shooting streak, the Falcons went ahead 13-12 on back-to-back baskets. Kyle Schleeter was in position to rebound an air ball and finished with his back to the basket. Zach Henderson gave Fayette the lead with his fifth point of the first quarter.

Then the Wildcats made three more 3-pointers along with a 3-point play during a 20-6 run.

Slater senior Chandler Zdybel made nine 3-pointers on the day and finished with 35 points.

“We’ve got to contend that, I don’t know if we could have rotated better earlier,” Bishop said.

“I think we were trying to kind of leave him there and force him to do that. Obviously, he did a pretty good job of knocking them down.”

Josh Henderson scored seven points in the first half, including the final bucket of the second quarter, which cut the deficit to 11.

Slater scored the first eight points of the second half, but the Falcons battled back. Josh Henderson ended the run with a score.