In a game that can be described as a tale of two halves, it was fitting that everything came down to the final seconds.

A thrilling tip-in at the buzzer by forward Egan Grafel gave the Huskies a 65-63 victory over Lamar (1-5). The win snapped a season opening six game losing streak for NIU (1-6).

The last play had to be reviewed by the officials because of how close it was to the buzzer.

“I thought it was before the buzzer,” Grafel said. “Once we won the game, it felt good.”

Forward Shaun Logan scored a game-high 17 points and had a team-high 10 rebounds for the Huskies in the win. This comes a week after head coach Ricardo Patton called on Logan to step up his game.

“It’s just something that I had to do,” Logan said. “Coach [Patton] has said it’s something I can do day-in and day-out, that I should do, and coach expects that.”

But even with Logan’s team-leading performance, things didn’t look very good for the Huskies early in the first half.

Both teams were characterized early by sloppy turnovers. However, early foul trouble for NIU allowed Lamar to come out of the gates strong. The Cardinals were able to capitalize off the Huskies’ first half foul trouble by converting 11 of 13 free throws.

With seven minutes left in the first half, Lamar went on a 16-4 run. NIU was down by 15 with just under two minutes before the break.

But with some last second scrambling, the Huskies were able to cut the halftime deficit to eight points.

NIU continued its resurgence in the second half. The Huskies only committed six fouls in the entire half, holding the Cardinals to one free throw attempt, which was missed.

“Their zone in the second half gave us some problems,” said Lamar head coach Steve Roccaforte. “We tried several different things, but we were unable to get through their zone.”

The zone, which Patton saved specifically for the second half, worked perfectly according to plan. The Huskies were able to force turnovers but, unlike in the first half, NIU converted those turnovers into points more efficiently.

“It was just two teams trying to win down the stretch,” Patton said. “Sometimes you don’t know how to win down the stretch, and certainly this game taught us some valuable lessons.”

Guards Ryan Paradise and Cody Yelder were inactive for the game. Paradise fractured his nose at the end of the first half in the last game against Stephen F. Austin.

“Paradise had surgery on Friday, but I’m not quite sure what is prognosis just yet,” Patton said

Patton also said that Yelder was inactive for academic reasons, but could not elaborate further.