GREEN BAY, Wis.—It’s now a waiting game for NIU after Tuesday night’s 56-39 loss to Wisconsin-Green Bay in the Mid-Continent Championship game.

An assured spot in the NCAA Tournament goes to UW-GB for winning the title. The Huskies must await the decision of the NCAA selection committee to find out if Tuesday’s loss was their final game.

The Huskies (25-5) could have guaranteed themselves a spot, but the Phoenix‘ Tony Bennett again proved to be too much to handle for NIU.

After being held scoreless in the opening half, Bennett showed why he’s considered the best player in the conference in the closing 20 minutes by unleashing 14 points and repeatedly sparking the boisterous crowd.

Bennett’s second-half resurgence was coupled with the play of bruising forward Dean Vander Plas. The 6-5, 235-pound senior found room to operate inside (18 points, eight rebounds). The end result was a UW-GB (24-6) victory that brought the Phoenix fans streaming on to the court after their team had clinched the first NCAA berth in school history.

Despite the lopsided final score, it was anyone’s ballgame with eight minutes left and UW-GB up 37-34.

“It’s just unfortunate the game got away like it did because I thought it was a lot closer than the score indicated,” NIU head coach Jim Molinari said.

“I think we lost our poise and Green Bay kept getting to the free throw line.”

The UW-GB cause was aided by a vocal sellout crowd of 6,197 that Molinari credits with inspiring the Phoenix while disrupting NIU.

“When you play under the tremendous pressure of that crowd,” Molinari said, “sooner or later it starts to wear on you.”

The Huskies kept the crowd out of the game in the first half by keeping Bennett from providing his usual spark. NIU’s 6-7 Andrew Wells started on Bennett and got a hand on several of his shots as the Huskies led 19-17 at intermission.

Bennett, named tourney MVP, got on track in the second half.

“The difficulty in guarding Bennet is the screens,” Whiteside said. “Green Bay does a great job of getting him open. They set a lot of screens for him and that kind of wears you down.

“He got a good shot in and got started and played well the rest of the half. Bennett was patient, he didn’t force a lot of shots,” Whiteside said. “He let the game come to him.”

The loss marks UW-GB’s third win against NIU this season.

“Both teams dug down deep inside, it’s unfortunate that we came out on the short end,” NIU forward Donnell Thomas said.

NIU’s postseason future will not be determined until Sunday, when the 64-team field will be announced on CBS television.

“Hopefully, we’ll see our name come across the screen,” Thomas said.

“I never really thought about that (an at-large bid) … because we came here to win the tournament,” Molinari said. “My feeling is when you have 25 wins, 24 against Division I (teams) and 15 on the road, and do the things we did defensively (such as) being second in field goal percentage (defensively), and second in points scored … I think we deserve a bid. We’ve done our job. Hopefully the regular-season champ will get to go.

“I think we deserve to be in.”