Down 18 points early in the second half, the NIU men’s basketball team chiseled the deficit down to five points.

But with 7:30 left, that’s as close as Kent State’s Jay Youngblood would allow it to get.

The senior and leading scorer for Kent State scored eight points in a two-and-a-half minute span to ruin NIU’s comeback chances and seal a 72-61 victory for the Golden Flashes.

“We knew coming in that this game was going to be a challenge,” said NIU coach Rob Judson. “Our team has done well because of our abilities to get stops when we need to. We just didn’t do that today.”

Kent State’s 12-5 start is the best in school history. The win over NIU (9-6 overall, 4-3 MAC) not only extended the team’s win streak to six, but also kept them undefeated in the MAC at 6-0.

Despite the loss, Judson was happy to see his team battle back from such a large deficit that was in part due to the Huskies getting off to a slow start for the second straight game.

NIU shot 28.6 percent from the field in the first half compared to Kent State’s 46.2. Yet even with the shots not falling, the Huskies were able to keep in close for much of the first half.

The Golden Flashes turned the ball over 10 times in the first half, limiting the offense. And it wasn’t until the end of the first that Kent State got into a rhythm and finished with a 9-0 run.

NIU tried to mount a comeback in the second half behind James Hughes (15 points) and Anthony Maestranzi (14 points), but in the end it came down to being able to stop Youngblood’s game-high of 27 points.

“Youngblood was very difficult for us to stop tonight,” Judson said.

Along with having troubles with him, the Huskies also had trouble crashing the boards. Kent State came as the best rebounding team in the MAC and proved it by out rebounding a taller NIU team.

“We pride our selves on getting rebounds and especially offensive rebounds,” said Kent State coach Jim Christian. “That’s just something we have to do in order to win.”