Central Michigan University Athletics
Central Michigan University
NIU
Out-Of-Sync Chippewas Fall To Northern Illinois
2/21/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The Central Michigan men's basketball team has lost four consecutive games.
The first three in that stretch were white-knucklers that could have easily gone in the Chippewas' favor.
That wasn't the case on Tuesday at McGuirk Arena.
Levi Bradley scored 18 points to lead five Huskies in double figures as Northern Illinois handed the Chippewas an 89-66 Mid-American Conference loss.
The Chippewas, who were a step slow all night, fell to 16-12, 6-9 MAC. NIU is 15-13, 7-9.
"I just feel like we weren't ourselves tonight," said CMU senior guard Braylon Rayson. "You look at the stats, we didn't make any shots. Usually we make those shots and I guess tonight they didn't want to fall."
CMU's Marcus Keene, the nation's leading scorer at 30.2 points per game, finished 18, Cecil Williams added 15 and seven rebounds, and Rayson had 10 points to lead the Chippewas, who fell into a double-digit deficit with just over 7 minutes to play in the first half and never seriously challenged after that.
"I feel like tonight was just a punch in the mouth," Rayson said. "The last three we lost, we lost in the last minute of the game, in overtime. We're mad, we're pretty upset right now. We know we can do better. Our coaches know we can do better. We've just got to get back to the drawing board."
The lone highlight came from Rayson, who hit two 3-pointers to become CMU's career leader, surpassing John Simons who hit 256 triples from 2012-16. Rayson now has 257.
"I put in the work for it, I passed a lot of great shooters, like John (Simons), like Robbie (Harman)," Rayson said. "I know it's probably going to get broken next year by Josh (Kozinski). It's good to have it for a year."
Rayson and Keene, who entered the game averaging a combined 51.4 points per game, the best of any guard duo in the nation, were a combined 6-for-24 from the floor overall, including 3-for-14 from 3-point range.
"Partly you give (NIU) credit for what they were able to do to disrupt us," CMU coach Keno Davis said. "Part of it is we missed shots that we haven't missed all year."
The Huskies finished with a 41-29 rebounding edge and outscored the Chippewas in the paint, 50-20.
The loss leaves CMU in fifth place in the MAC West with three conference games remaining. The Chippewas play at Toledo on Friday (6 p.m.). They are ninth in the overall standings and, if the MAC Tournament were to begin today, would have to go on the road for a first-round game.
"This was an important game for seeding, for placement in the MAC West and the overall (standings)," Davis said. "A trademark of this team has been how well we've played, the effort that we've been able to give, the energy that we've had on the court. While we didn't have that tonight, I think the positive that I can take out of it is we haven't seen that very often.
"As much as this loss hurts, it would hurt a lot more if we played like this to end our season. I know with the character that's assembled on this team, they're going to come back with energy, they're going to come back focused to make sure that what you see on the court the rest of the season is going to resemble what you've seen on the court the whole year and that's a team that plays extremely hard."
