FULTON -- The Fulton Hornets showed tremendous effort and played physical defense, but they couldn't get their shots to fall Tuesday at Fulton High School.
"This group of girls, we're that the team that's filled with ifs," Fulton girls basketball coach Clayton Stewart said after losing his first home game. "If we just did this or if we just did that, and tonight we're usually a little better shooting our 3-point shot when we get them than going 1-for-700. They were all good shots, just none of them fell.
"...If we shoot 30 three 3s, an then we make 10-15 percent of that, there's nine points somewhere in there. If we're in the paint, and we have a 5-foot radius there that we're shooting from and we score maybe 40 percent of those and there's another eight points. Free, if you're 60 percent, there's another eight-10 points there.
"There's a lot of little things that we got to be able to take care of, and we'll be able to get over that and let that defensive battle work with what we do and come through."
Fulton lost 45-23 to the Boonville Lady Pirates in the new gym's first varsity girls basketball game.
After Kier Henderson's floater inside from her offensive rebound tied the game at 2, the Hornets trailed Boonville for the remainder of the contest when Karagyn Cooper knocked down a 3 to put the Lady Pirates up 5-2.
Boonville only made three 3s, but the Lady Pirates' 14-of-20 free-throw shooting dug the Hornets into a hole on the night. Meanwhile, Fulton converted one 3 and went 1-for-2 from the free-throw line.
The Hornets may not have done well on the offensive end, but their defense kept it close early.
Scoring Fulton's first two buckets, Henderson hit a jumper to bring it to a three-point game (7-4) halfway through the first quarter.
From there, the Lady Pirates went on an 11-0 run.
Boonville's scoring stretch started with Ali Eichelberger's make from deep. Then Zoe Davis went to the charity stripe twice and converted 4-of-4 attempts before two Charlotte Rohrbach layups two possessions apart ended the run.
Henderson continued to carry Fulton's offense, scoring a layup from a Makenzie Shock throw-in to end the scoreless streak and make it 18-6 Boonville.
"She's the the battery, the sparkplug, the energizer of this team," Stewart said. "She's a little bit more vocal than what she was in the summer. But her work ethic is easily the best one out there. I mean, she really does not stop, and that rubs off on the rest of the girls. She's going her rear end off, we're going out to battle, too. Again, the points, the points we're getting there. On the execution part, we're learning. ...Kier, she's definitey a leader. She was unanimoulsy voted as captain."
Henderson stole the ball on the Lady Pirates' next drive, and the score remained 18-6 Boonville at the end of the first quarter.
In a slow start to the second quarter by both teams, it took roughly 3:30 for the Lady Pirates to put up the first points of the quarter on a Davis layup.
Ending Boonville's 8-1 run to start the second quarter, McKenzi Washington became the first Hornet not named Henderson to score, sinking a floater to make it 26-9 Lady Pirates.
A third Fulton player got on the scoreboard before halftime when Arianna Connor scored a layup off a Henderson assist to bring it to 28-11 Boonville. That remained the score at halftime.
Following the break, the Hornets started the second half strong, going on a 7-2 run.
Audrey Arnold drained Fulton's lone 3 of the contest, hitting it from the left corner off a Bre'Awn Richmond assist.
Richmond got on the scoresheet herself, going up for a layup after Shock stole the ball from Boonville to make it 28-16 Lady Pirates.
When Effie Morris converted two free throws, Boonville scored its only points in the Hornets' run. After that, Arnold made Fulton's final shot from the field with her stepback jumper inside, bringing the Hornets' deficit back to 12 (30-18).
Boonville tacked on another five points to its lead, up 35-18 through three quarters.
Fulton began the fourth quarter not how it wanted, giving up a three-point play to Davis that put Boonville ahead by 20 (38-18).
Arnold responded instantly with an inside floater on the right side of the hoop to cut the Hornets' deficit to 18 (38-20).
Keeping it up, Henderson snagged the ball from Boonville before getting an end-to-end layup to fall, cutting it to a 16-point contest (38-22).
Decreasing Fulton's deficit by a further point, Dezteni Galbreath-Chambers converted 1-of-2 free throws.
Boonville went on a 7-0 run to end the game, with Katie Drummond's layup off a Reagan Wilson steal the final bucket.
Henderson and Arnold led Fulton's offense with nine and seven points, respectively.
"I expect a lot out of her, I call her 'oddball," Stewart said of Arnold. "I expect a lot out of her because she is just a sophomore, but she's a dang good ballplayer. She's a natural athlete. She's a natural ballhandler and natural scorer. I mean, she works hard at it too. But she's just that gym rat. She just can't get enough of basketball. Probably doesn't hurt that dad coaches as well. And (James Arnold) has some great insight for her as well because she tells me after every game she says he tells her this and that. That's good having that as well.
"She and Kier probably, and she's co-captain, those two probably bare most of the weight of the scoring, of the leadership, of the 'let's do this, let's do that,'" Stewart said. "While Kier may not be the most vocal, Audrey will step in and be a little more vocal, so that's always a good thing,
"The leadership of the, 'Let's do this. Let's do that,' The pick me up. Where Kier may not be the most vocal, Audrey will step in and be a little more vocal. So that's that's always a good thing.
For the Lady Pirates, Davis tallied a game-high 15 points, Cooper added eight and Rohrboch with seven.
After losing their first home game in the new gym, the Hornets fell to 1-7. Boonville won its second straight, improving to 4-1.
"It was nice to finally get one at home and have the home crowd, the band playing and everything," Stewart said. "It was nice hearing all that, the shouts, and I didn't even look at the big jumbotron at all. But I mean it's a beautiful gym. I mean I came into something really nice, and it's really good. I told everybody at 'Meet the Hornets Night,' I said, 'We want to put on a good show.' Everybody keeps saying that the girls are coming along and looking good. Last year, we got beat by this, and thie year we're only getting beat by that. They're working hard."
Fulton (0-2 North Central Missouri Conference) hops back into NCMC action when it hosts Kirksville (3-2, 0-1 NCMC) at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Last season, the Hornets lost both meetings to the Tigers, including a 45-29 defeat on Feb. 10 in Fulton.
"I thought every one of our games are winnable, except maybe the Hannibal game," Stewart said. "They're just extremely talented, but I kid you not everybody else that I looked at on film from last year to this year, I think we match up with everybody, including Boonville except for Zoe (Davis). But I dont know, maybe between Audrey and Kier could probably be a good matchup against her, and she's still one. But yeah, I I can't not every game that we've played so far except to him again.
"I thought we have a very good chance of winning and they just come out that first quarter is usually a doozy for us. Kind of a hard one to get started. But once we get started, second quarter we kind of come back. Third quarter is usually our best quarter, and we do quite well on it. Fourth quarter is a matter of maintaining and keep fighting and see if we can get back like we did in the Marhsall game. We came back from down 16 in the first quarter to take in the lead in the fourth. Yeah, and that's kind of what I thought was going to happen tonight. I still think it's something we could've done."