If college basketball games ended after one half, the NIU women’s basketball team would be 7-4 in MAC play.

Unfortunately for the Huskies, there are two halves.

And despite having two players score more than 20 points, the Huskies squandered another first-half lead and fell to Miami-Ohio 71-68 on Saturday.

“I’m very disappointed,” said NIU coach Carol Hammerle, whose team has lost six in a row. “I thought our team executed throughout the majority of the game. We just didn’t win.”

NIU (6-16 overall, 3-8 MAC) went into halftime up 32-26 and led by as much as eight points in the second half, but that’s when it started to slip away.

Two missed free throws by Jamie Wilson and three straight fouls allowed Miami-Ohio (11-11, 5-6) to go on a short run from the free-throw line and close the gap to two.

“That was the big difference in the game,” Hammerle said. “That was a crucial time and we should have put them away but we didn’t.”

NIU held onto the lead until five minutes left in the game, when the RedHawks’ Nicki Motto started firing. The 5-foot-5 guard hit three three-pointers in a four-minute span to take the lead.

“I don’t like taking a lot of threes,” Miami coach Maria Fantanarosa said. “But Nicki is one of the best in the league and she just got hot.”

Motto’s nine points in the closing minutes gave her a team-high 19 for the game.

For NIU, a pair of sophomores led the team in scoring. Stephanie Raymond tied a career high while Kristin Wiener set a career high as both had 24 points.

Despite the scoring, Raymond and Wiener still couldn’t get over the team’s second-half play.

“This is extremely frustrating,” Raymond said. “In the beginning of the season we felt we couldn’t win the first half. Now it’s switched and we can’t win the second half. We just don’t know what to do.”