ROLLA, Mo. - It was the kind of line that even brought a laugh from his coach.
A scorching shooting night for the Blair Oaks boys basketball team had just locked up an 81-71 win for the Falcons against Licking in the Class 3 sectional round, and one of those sharpshooters summed up what it meant.
"We're just excited to practice for another day, I've never been so excited to practice," Blair Oaks guard Kory Franks said with a smile after he connected on 6-of-7 3-pointers Thursday on his way to a team-high 22 points.
Franks' hot shooting was part of an effort where all five Blair Oaks starters scored in double figures. The Falcons connected on 58 percent from the field in the win at Missouri S&T, and it earned them a spot in a quarterfinal contest at 6 p.m. Saturday at Drury University in Springfield.
It also continued a unique stretch of rematches for the Falcons in the postseason.
To win their district championship game, the Falcons had to beat the Eugene Eagles for the second time this season, and they did just that.
To win their sectional game, they had to avenge a regular-season loss to Licking, and they accomplished that.
Now the Falcons (21-8) will play Strafford (27-3), a team that beat Blair Oaks 60-51 on Feb. 7 in the Central Bank Shootout at Rackers Fieldhouse.
"It poses a unique situation," Blair Oaks coach Ryan Fick said. "We win our district and our sectional and quarterfinal games are against teams we've played already. That's very rare at this time of year, but I think it gives our kids a level of familiarity, and I like that.
"Strafford is a really, really solid basketball team with a lot of playoff experience. They're a returning Final Four team, so we've got to be ready to go."
Owen Luebbering, who connected on 9-of-13 shots to score 20 points, said the Falcons want to build on their eight-game winning streak, as they haven't lost since that game with Stafford.
"We've just got to keep rolling," he said. "We've been playing with a chip on our shoulder all year long and we've got to keep that going. Nobody expected us to be here and we've just got to keep proving them wrong."
The Falcons survived a bit of a roller-coaster ride Thursday night.
They started hot, nailing their first four shots - a layup from Kellen Griep and 3s from Franks, Cody Alexander and C.J. Closser - while racing out to an 11-2 lead. It set the tone for a night where Blair Oaks made 62 percent (13-of-21) from 3-point range.
"We were confident coming in," Franks said. "Shots have been falling lately and we're a dangerous team when that happens.
"It just shook out all of the nerves and it got the crowd involved. That was a huge, huge thing for us to do, coming out that hot."
But Licking had an answer, as the Wildcats (24-5) ripped off 12 straight points to take the lead.
Licking was up 19-15 after one quarter and eventually took its biggest lead of the night at 27-18 just two minutes into the second quarter.
Luebbering said the team refused to panic when it got down nine.
"We've been through a lot of adversity this year and we pulled through again," he said.
Fick said the Falcons kept their composure at that point.
"We just kept taking it one possession at a time," he said. "We knew it started on the defensive end - we had to get stops. And we got some stops and then converted on the offensive end."
Perhaps the biggest shot came immediately after that, as Jordan Null hit a 3, got fouled and converted the four-point play. Licking answered with a layup, but Null countered with another 3 and Blair Oaks was back in it.
The Falcons eventually knotted the game at 37 at halftime.
"That's the fight in this team," Franks said. "These guys fight harder than any team in the state. There was never any doubt in my mind we would come back."
Closser hit a 3 for Blair Oaks' first basket of the third quarter and the Falcons didn't know it then, but they'd never trail again. After a Licking turnover, Franks connected again from beyond the arc. And after the Wildcats missed a pair of layups, a 3 by Alexander gave the Falcons the momentum they'd keep the rest of the game.
Alexander would end up with 14 points, Closser added 12 and Null had 11.
"If you can get all five starters in double figures, that's huge," Fick said.
The Falcons led by as many as 15 points in the decisive third quarter, which ended with Blair Oaks up 58-47.
Playing man-to-man defense during the first half, the Falcons watched the Wildcats make 16-of-24 shots (67 percent). But a switch to zone helped limit Licking to just 5-of-18 shooting (28 percent) in the third quarter.
"We made the adjustment at halftime to go into the zone to try to slow things down a little bit," Fick said. "I thought it kept them off-balance."
Licking never got closer than eight points during a high-scoring fourth quarter that saw the teams combine for 47 points, with the Wildcats holding a slim 24-23 edge.
Lane Duncan and Nathan Wilson combined for 53 of Licking's 71 points. Duncan dropped in a game-high 28 on 13-of-27 shooting and ended up with a double-double after pulling down a game-high 11 rebounds. Wilson hit 11-of-16 shots while scoring 25 points.
"It's really difficult to prepare for a kid like Lane Duncan," Fick said. "If you don't send a double at him, he's going to score. If you do send a double at him, he does a good job finding where the double came from and they have other guys who can knock down shots."