NIU men’s basketball dropped its third straight game of the season while in Ohio against the Dayton Flyers on Saturday.

The Huskies (1-5) were defeated by the Flyers (5-2) by the score of 60-43, in a tale of two halves. In the first half, NIU managed to score just five points. They went 2-19 from the field, shooting 10.5 percent.

That is one more point than the lowest total ever in a half, which was set in 2008 by Savannah State, who scored four points against Kansas.

Dayton opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, and freshman guard Akeem Springs came back with a jumper at the 19:09 mark. The Huskies would give up 21 points before they scored again, which came on a free throw by freshman point guard Travon Baker with 3:07 left in the first half. Baker missed his second, then hit a jumper 20 seconds later to close out the scoring for NIU, who went into the locker room down 26-5.

“Unfortunately, the ball just wouldn’t go in the basket,” said coach Mark Montgomery in a news release. “Then the crowd got into it, we had some good looks, they just didn’t go and we missed five free throws.”

The lack of scoring has plagued NIU so far this season, especially with so many young players still adjusting to college basketball. The second half showed much better efficiency from the Huskies, as they came out and scored first.

Baker got fouled and hit two free throws to open the half, but the deficit to start the game proved too much for NIU.

The lead got as high as 30 for Dayton near the half-way mark of the second half.

The Huskies out-scored Dayton in the second half 38-34 but would have had to play nearly perfect basketball to overcome such an early deficit.

“I want to forget the first half and focus on the second half when we shot 59 percent from the field,” Montgomery said in a news release. “We outscored them in the second half and maybe we are out of our slump now. Their starters were still in the game until 30 seconds to go, so I credit our student-athletes for not giving up and continuing to fight.”

Baker lead all scorers with his career-high 17 points, but Dayton had three players in double digits. Dayton also utilized its rebounding advantage to get 19 second-chance points over the Huskies, a come-back killing statistic.

While the score doesn’t say much, Montgomery knew a key would be limiting fast break opportunities and stopping their offensive rebounding. NIU was able to take-away the fast break, giving up just 11 points to Dayton, which was as many as NIU scored. The offensive rebounding was not kept in check and that hurt the Huskies.

Despite some of the factors, Montgomery still saw positives in his players performance.

“I’m excited because not too many people are scoring over 60 points against us,” Montgomery said in a news conference. “This is a tough environment, they had almost 13,000 here tonight and it isn’t an easy place to play. We didn’t handle it well in the first half but we came out in the second half and battled all the way to the end. I have to give our guys credit for that. They showed heart and poise and they kept working.”