A late second-half flurry could not quite erase a frustrating first-half start Tuesday night at Wachs Arena.

Northern State erased all but two points of a 19-point deficit before eventually falling to Mary 76-72 in Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference men’s basketball action.

“Your margin for error shrinks to about zero when you put yourself behind 17 at the half,” said Northern coach Saul Phillips. “Rather than parse the couple possessions where we maybe could have had a little better look, I would spend more of my time focusing on how do we dig ourselves an 19-point hole so quickly?”

The Marauders steadily built a first-half advantage, which at its largest reached 45-26 right before the end of the half. The visitors repeatedly got offensive rebounds, many of which they turned in second-chance points, finishing with 20 on the night.

“We got out-rebounded,” Phillips said. “We got absolutely pounded on the glass.”

Northern’s Kaleb Mitchell, who had career highs of 14 points, nine rebounds and 3 steals, said rebounding is all about effort.

“It’s takes effort to get a board. It never just happens to be bouncing the other way or this way,” Mitchell said. “It’s all energy and effort, and if you put in the effort you’ll get the rebounds. That’s something that we need to work on.”

The Wolves regrouped in the second half and, thanks to a big boost from Devon Brooke off the bench, slowly chipped away at the margin.

Brooke scored 13 second-half points, nine on a trio of 3-pointers, to help Northern get back to within striking distance.

Eventually the Wolves sliced the margin down to a single possession when Kwat Abdelkarim’s 3-pointer cut the deficit to 72-70 with 2:58 remaining. From there, NSU had three different possessions down two points in the closing minutes, but could never get over the hump.

“We didn’t get probably our cleanest execution on those last three possessions, didn’t get exactly what we wanted,” Phillips said, “but at the same time, your point guard is hobbled, so you got a backup point guard playing the point, you got your point guard playing the two, we had some moving pieces out there. They performed admirably, we didn’t get it done.”

Mary finally iced the victory with a pair of free throws with 9.5 seconds remaining for the final margin of difference.

While the Wolves weren’t quite able to complete their comeback, they did show some grit and resolve to fight back.

“It’s definitely hard for us, but we’re going to keep playing and trying our best,” Mitchell said. “It doesn’t matter how much we’re down, we need to bring energy and not give up, because giving up will always end up in a loss.”

Brooke ended up leading Northern with 16 points. James Glenn added 12, and Abdelkarim contributed 11.

The Wolves dropped to 1-5 on the season with the setback. Phillips said the team has shown flashes at times early in the season.

“I think we’ve shown we have the capabilities of being a good team. We’ve also shown at times bad self-recognition of what we’re doing well,” Phillips said. “We threw it into the post very effectively for a long time and kind of got away from that, didn’t get a lot of paint touches late.”

Northern is off until playing another NSIC contest at MSU Moorhead on Thursday, Dec. 5.

Mitchell said the team needs to play with energy and pay attention to detail.

“We need to work on playing as a team, and everybody coming in with energy, and crashing the boards and all the little things,” Mitchell said, “because if we don’t do all those little things, it’s going to be hard to get a dub.”

To see a complete box score from Tuesday’s game, click on the following link:

https://nsuwolves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/2024-25/umary/boxscore/13710