Kuehl leads Wildcats with 19 points
WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. – The Northern Michigan men’s basketball team suffered its first loss of the season on Saturday afternoon, an 80-67 defeat to the Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Tritons.
After a hot shooting performance Friday in which the Wildcats exploded for 91 points, the offense cooled off, struggling out of the gate and never finding its footing. NMU held only a brief lead in the early stages of the game and spent most of the night trying to claw back from a double-digit deficit.
The Wildcats shot 24-58 (41.4%) from the field compared to UMSL’s 24-44 (54.5%). After going 13-21 from beyond the arc on Friday, NMU suffered a drastic cold spell, finishing just 3-23 (13.0%) from deep.
Dylan Kuehl paced Northern with 19 points on 7-11 shooting while adding six rebounds. No other Wildcat reached double figures after five did so in Friday’s win. Taye Moore led the Tritons with 22 points, and Makeer Makeer added another 20.
The Wildcats are now 1-1 on the season and will look to get back on track in the same gym next weekend.
How it Happened
The Wildcats opened the game with a bucket from Kuehl and led 5-2, but the Tritons responded with a 7-0 run to go ahead 11-8 five minutes into the game.
A 3-pointer from Jackson Dudek kept NMU within single digits, but another 7-0 UMSL run pushed the margin to 25-13 just past the halfway point of the first half.
UMSL built its lead to as much as 42-26 before Trevor Polite scored the final bucket of the half, sending the Wildcats into the locker room trailing 42-28. NMU shot just 37.5% in the half, while UMSL connected at a 58.3% clip.
Any hopes of a quick second-half push out of the break were halted immediately, as the Tritons opened with back-to-back triples to go up 48-28. Northern trimmed the deficit to 15 on multiple occasions, but each time UMSL answered to restore control.
Consecutive and-ones from Kuehl finally pulled the Wildcats within 60-50 with 6:54 to play, but UMSL responded with an 11-3 run over the next two minutes to put the game out of reach. The Wildcats were never able to fully recover and took their first loss of the season.
Up Next
Northern returns to Wisconsin Dells next weekend to take on Northern State on Friday, Nov. 21, and Northwest Missouri State on Sunday, Nov. 23.
