Patience prevails.

That was the lesson taught to the NIU men’s basketball team in the second half by Wisconsin-Green Bay in Chick Evans Field House Wednesday, as the Phoenix handed the Huskies a 75-65 loss.

NIU came out in the first half flying around on defense with the determination to avenge a pair of losses (67-71, 68-75) given by UWGB last season.

But as the time clock drained itself in the second half, so did the Huskies.

“Our pace just slowed and slowed itself to a crawl, and we fell right into (UWGB’s) hands,” said NIU coach Jim Rosborough. I don’t think we played at all as sharp as we did on Monday (80-79 win over Eastern Illinois).”

With 17:23 left in the game, co-captain Donald Whiteside was benched with four fouls. During his eight-minute absence, rushed shots and poor shot selection led to a scoring lull for the Huskies, as they only tallied five points.

NIU dropped from a 16-of-25 shooting percentage (.640) in the first half to 6-of-24 (.250) in the second 20.

“We wanted the ball in Stacy’s (Arrington, 12 points) hands a little bit more towards the end,” Rosborough said, “and we had some people who forced some shots and some other things. The good side is that it showed we wanted it, but on the other hand, we’ve got to grow and mature.”

With the Huskies young starting lineup of five sophomores, there is room for maturing. However, the Phoenix boasted three freshmen in the starting five, including leading scorer (23 points) and UWGB coach’s son, Tony Bennett.

Bennett, who led all players with nine assists, was a catylst in the comeback of UWGB.

“We just wanted to control the tempo and slow it down a little bit,” Bennett said. “We got rattled a few times, but in the end our patience prevailed.”

With a little over a minute left to play, the Huskies resorted to three-point shots to attempt to come back from a 62-68 deficit. But again NIU tried to rush its fastbreak, and in turn it beefed up its turnover statistics to 21.

While shooting from the twilight zone turned out to be the specialty for UWGB (7-of-11), it was hardly on the menu for NIU (2-of-8).