In front of a national television audience, NIU men’s basketball showcased a lot of effort, but also its inexperience against a senior-laden Valparaiso squad.

The Huskies (0-2) fell to the Crusaders (2-0) by a final score of 69-46. Valparaiso was led by senior Ryan Broekhoff’s 20-point performance.

Broekhoff shot 6-12 from the field and 4-8 from downtown, including multiple fast break 3-pointers that helped Valpo get a big lead early in the first half.

“He carried them,” said coach Mark Montgomery. “He had 16 of their 23 points. You have to be there on the catch; we weren’t there. A few times we lost him in transition. He’s a fifth-year senior; you have to give him credit because he made those shots.”

Senior guard Matt Kenney also got hot from behind the arc, as he hit three out of five 3-pointers. He finished with 16 points.

While there were some out-of-the-ordinary factors that seemingly had both teams in scoring doldrums early on, each team had plenty of scoring opportunities.

“We still continued to play defense, that’s what I liked about the first half,” Montgomery said. “Even though our shots weren’t falling, we still played hard and we held them to 23 points.”

NIU shot 18 percent in the first half, while Valparaiso shot 34 percent, as the Crusaders picked up their effort toward the end of the first half.

“I think Valpo did a really good job,” said freshman guard Akeem Springs. “They executed well. I think that was more a factor of why the score was what it was.”

That effort in the second half was immediately evident as the Crusaders came out of the locker room and nailed two 3-pointers to start off the half.

The hot shooting continued from downtown for Valpo, as they made five more 3-pointers before the end of the game.

The Crusaders finished 13-24 from behind the arc, while the Huskies did not put forth enough effort to keep it close, according to Montgomery.

“[In the] second 20 minutes we got outside of character,” Montgomery said. “We gave up some drives and didn’t get back in transition. I thought we competed for 25 minutes instead of 40 minutes.”

The Huskies were led in points by junior forward/guard Aksel Bolin, who finished the game with 10 points and nine rebounds. Bolin was the only Huskie to score in double figures.

The next highest scorer for the Huskies was freshman guard Daveon Balls who scored nine points, shootinf four of 10 from the field.

While the Huskies held advantages in rebounding and offensive rebounding by a large margin, they only managed 10 second chance points from 19 offensive boards.

The Huskies also only had seven assists in the game, which Springs believes is a statistic that involves more factors than just one-on-one play.

“We need to work on our offense and execute more,” Springs said. “We ran some good plays but some of the passes we had were just a missed shot or it was fumbled. We could have had a lot more than we did.”