Women’s basketball had a rare off night on the defensive end as it gave up a season-high 65 points in a losing effort.

The Huskies (5-8, 1-2 MAC) lost to the Bowling Green Falcons (8-7, 1-3 MAC), 65-59, Wednesday at the Stroh Center in Bowling Green, Ohio. The Falcons had entered the contest on a five-game losing streak.

“Yeah, we were just late on help pretty much the whole game …,” head coach Kathi Bennett said, according to an interview on NIUTube. “We were very sluggish until we got down and we played the way we [usually] play. I don’t know what more to say. We did a better job when we switched everything. … We were late in gaps. We helped when we didn’t need to help. We’re going by and left shooters. We just didn’t have that pop. I don’t know how to explain it.”

NIU came into the contest ranked 19th in the nation and first in the MAC in scoring defense, giving up only 53.2 points per game. That defense didn’t show up Wednesday.

This was the first game in which the Huskies allowed an opponent to score 60 or more points since Nov. 20, when they lost to the Valparaiso Crusaders at the Convocation Center.

The Falcons connected on 45.2 percent (19-42) of their field goal attempts. That is the second-highest shooting percentage allowed by the NIU defense on the season, which came into the game holding opponents to 37 percent from the floor.

The Huskies trailed the Falcons by 20 points, 55-35, before senior guard Amanda Corral knocked down a jumper with 5:15 to play to begin an NIU run. They got as close as five points, 60-55, with 1:46 to play after a layup from redshirt senior guard Danny Pulliam.

Five Huskies scored in double figures, and Corral led the way with 14 points. She carried the struggling NIU offense in the first half, scoring 12 of the team’s 17 points.

The Huskies poured in 42 points in the second half, but they had dug themselves into too deep of a hole to climb out of. The 42 points matched a season high for points scored in a half.

“We just need to start focusing on what we can do and stop focusing on what we can’t do, and I really feel like that was our mentality in the second half,” Bennett said, according to a news release. “It’s frustrating because we’re right there — we’re practicing hard, our attitude’s right, everybody’s at work — but we have a fear of failure.”

The Huskies’ next game is 1 p.m. Saturday at the Convocation Center against the Kent State Golden Flashes.

Kent State enters with a 3-12 overall record, but its most recent win came against the very Falcons that beat NIU. Kent State won that game, 55-48, Saturday.