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DeKALB – For a team riding its longest road winning streak in two decades, NIU is having decidedly less success at home.
The Huskies on Tuesday lost for the fourth time in their past six home games, trailing throughout the second half in an 82-76 Mid-American Conference loss to Ohio at the Convocation Center.
“We just have to play better, point blank like that,” senior guard Darweshi Hunter said. “We’re just not playing as well as we do on the road. I don’t know for what reason. We just have to be better.”
NIU has won four straight on the road, its longest road winning streak since the 2002-03 season. But the Huskies fell to 3-5 at home this year with the loss.
“We have to figure out this formula soon because I’m tired of losing at home, I really am,” second-year coach Rashon Burno said. “It’s not fair to our fans. It’s not fair to the people who pay money to see us play. We’re two different teams at home and on the road. We’ll figure it out.”
NIU (10-14, 6-5 MAC) led for eight minutes in the first half but couldn’t get the gap any closer than six until the final 78 seconds. Anthony Crump got a long rebound and fed it ahead to a wide-open Kaleb Thornton for a layup to make it 77-74 with 1:18 left.
On the next possession, Thornton got a steal but missed the layup down the other end. The Bobcats (13-11, 5-6) made their free throws down the stretch to close out the win.
The Huskies missed repeated layups in the game and also missed three dunks in shooting 46% from the floor and 65% from the free-throw line.
“I feel like we lost the game on our mistakes,” Hunter said. “We normally play a lot better than that and we didn’t tonight. If we play how we’re supposed to play, we win that game.”
Burno said the sloppiness around the basket was uncharacteristic for his team and chalked it up to bad luck.
“The basketball gods I believe in, when you don’t play hard and you don’t have the right intentions all the time, they won’t reward you,” Burno said. “You won’t see that many dunks missed for the seven games we have left. Tonight was an outlier in that regard. We don’t miss layups, we’re pretty good around the 2-point field goal percentage, we don’t miss dunks. But for some reason it all happened at once. Chalk it up to bad luck, but I don’t think we had the right mindset coming into this game and sometimes the gods won’t reward you.”
The Huskies are 6-3 since Jan. 10, with the only three losses coming at home, although there are two home wins in that stretch as well.
Thornton, a senior from Bolingbrook, said it’s easier to get caught up in yourself playing in front of people you know, and that leads to added pressure.
Burno said playing on the road is a more controlled atmosphere to which the Huskies are responding better.
“On the road it’s a different vibe,” Burno said. “I can control the environment, I can control what they talk about, I can control how much sleep they get. Here you have to deal with class and etc., etc. They have yet to grasp the importance of discipline when playing at home because there are a lot of distractions.”
Thornton matched a career high with 21 points to go with eight assists to only three turnovers. David Coit and Zarique Nutter each scored 12, and Hunter had 11.
Jaylin Hunter led Ohio with 19 points. The Bobcats finished with a 39-30 rebounding edge. NIU won the turnover battle 17-9.
Ohio led the entire second half, but the lead was never more than 11 and most of the time was single digits.
“Earlier in the year, I think we would have folded, lost this game by 15, 20 points,” Thornton said. “Obviously, the end result is we want to win, and we didn’t do that tonight. But showing we had the wherewithal to stay in the game mentally, not just physically, I’m proud of the guys for doing that.”