By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
NKU basketball coach Darrin Horn was not happy – with himself, his coaches or his players.
NKU basketball fans might as well have joined that party. There was a lot to be unhappy about Thursday after the Norse wasted a terrific second-half comeback – and fumbled a five-point lead with 2:41 left – and turned a much-needed win in the home opener into a 61-59 loss at the buzzer to Nicholls State University out of Thibodaux, La.
“We’re not a very good basketball team,” Horn said of the Norse who return three starters from a team that got within one game of the Horizon League championship last season. “We’re not playing very well, and that’s on me.”
Nicholls State, however, did play well and that’s a credit, Horn said, to Tevon Saddler, one of the nation’s top young coaches who won the Southland Conference a year ago and could do so again with a team heavy on players from Saddler’s native Baltimore.
But if things were not going well at Truist Arena, the downsides didn’t end on the court. As predicted by many of the longtime season-ticketholders when they were told their seats along the side of the court would require an additional premium, many of their familiar faces were not here.
When the 27-strong cheerleader group entered the court 20 minutes before tipoff, there were 369 fans in the seats. And as the NKU team entered at the seven-minute mark before tipoff, those six sections running along the court – three on each side – held a total of 295 fans.
The announced attendance of 2,345 was almost a thousand below last year’s average of 3,270.
Although there were more high-priced courtside seats and even a bar with cocktail tables at the end of the floor replacing the media section that had been relocated to an unlighted corner section some 150 feet from the floor. That there were no game notes, no rosters and no available stats can be explained by the fact that NKU’s sports information director left for another job a little more than two weeks ago and the folks at Highland Heights have been scrambling.
Which is more than this NKU team was doing in a stand-around first half that saw the visiting Colonels run rings around the Norse, especially when the ball went up on the glass and as often as not, an NSU player would come flying past a reaching Norseman for a follow slam dunk.
“Too many of our guys were not aggressive,” Horn said, puzzled at the 30-15 first-half rebounding edge (12-1 on the offensive boards) for Nicholls after NKU outrebounded “the biggest team – Florida State – in college basketball,” Horn said, a week ago on the road. Those second-chance points were a big part of NKU’s 19-point deficit (33-14) with 5:50 left in the first half.
How the NKU players felt about this was unknown. No Norse were made available for the media after the game.
But there’s no doubt NKU got its act together early in the second half on a 23-13 run led by fifth-year senior Trey Robinson “playing the way a fifth-year senior should play,” Horn said of one nine-straight-point run by the 6-foot-7 Robinson. His 19 points and seven rebounds eventually led NKU from 19 down to five up – 58-53 – with 2:41 left.
Robinson had help. Lefty grad student transfer Josh Dilling from Northern State, while not starting, fired in 18 points with four three-pointers as a stand-still shooter in his 32:46 of action. And senior Sam Vinson, with a big brace on his surgically repaired left knee, did everything but shoot it (he was 0-5) with team-highs of eight rebounds, seven assists and three steals.
But in those final minutes, no NKU player had the answer as the Norse missed their final four shots (three in the paint including two layups) and a free throw after taking that 58-53 lead.
Nicholls did not miss when it counted as the Colonels raced downcourt after Dilling’s missed layup with :09 left and guard Byron Ireland, who led Nicholls with 15, banked home a driving layup with 0:2 seconds left for the win.
“That’s going to happen,” Horn said of those last shots not dropping, “the ball doesn’t go in. We got some really good looks.” Just not the basket the Norse needed. And for the second straight game, NKU scored in the 50’s. And shot sub-40 percent – 36.5 percent on 19 of 52 although that bettered Nicholls’ 32.4 (22 of 68). NKU hit on just 26.1 percent from three (six of 23) to Nicholls eight of 23.
But for an NKU team that had more bench points (21-nine), fewer turnovers (10 to 14), and more fast break points (nine to three), only one stat mattered – or maybe two. NKU was outrebounded by a humongous 57-33 and as a result, gave up 24 second-chance points while scoring just seven themselves.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to get these guys going,” Horn said.
Indeed, with a revenge-minded Cincinnati team, ranked 17th in the nation and sure to bring lots of fans, coming into Truist Tuesday at 7 for the River Rumble after losing 64-51 here two years ago, the Norse had better figure it out fast.
BOX SCORE
NICHOLLS 35 26—61
NORTHERN KENTUCKY 25 34—59
NICHOLLS (2-2): Ireland 5-18 1-4 4-6 15, Cornish 4-12 3-7 1-2 12, Brown III 4-13 3-9 0-0 13, Robinson 3-10 1-2 0-0 7, West Jr. 3-9 0-0 1-4 7, Collins 3-3 0-0 3-6 9, English 0-2 0-1 0-0 0, Malone 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Gray Jr. 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 22-68 8-23 9-18 61.
NORTHERN KENTUCKY (0-3): Robinson 7-12 0-2 5-7 19, Itejere 3-4 0-0 3-4 9, Pivorius 3-6 2-4 0-0 8, Vinson 0-5 0-2 2-4 2, Gherezgher 0-3 0-2 0-0 0, Dilling 6-14 4-10 2-4 18, Wells 0-3 0-2 2-2 2, Pettus II 0-4 0-1 1-2 1, Rapolis 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 19-52 6-23 15-23 59.
