None of Peyton Stovall’s three steals in Ball State’s win over the NIU men’s basketball team were bigger than his final one Saturday.

With 7.2 seconds remaining in the game and the Cardinals clinging to a three-point lead, Stovall stole Anthony Maestranzi’s in-bounds pass and sealed a 67-62 victory for Ball State.

NIU (7-16 overall, 2-11 MAC) has lost eight games in a row, while Ball State (10-11, 7-6) broke a two-game streak of its own.

“It’s tough,” NIU coach Rob Judson said. “We fought hard to get back in the game and got the game tied on a big shot by Paige [Paulsen]. We were right there, but we have been close in each of our last four games.”

The Huskies were without All-MAC forward Marcus Smallwood for the third-straight game, but he will play in NIU’s next game, Judson said.

Ssophomore James Hughes scored nine of his career-high 13 points in the second half as NIU came back from a nine-point second-half deficit to tie the game at 62. Hughes scored seven straight points for the Huskies early in the second half.

“We’re a tight-knit group; we’ll get through this,” Hughes said. “We are 13 players strong, plus our coaches. We just have to keep getting better in practice.”

Ball State used a press defense for much of the second half and forced 15 NIU turnovers, which it converted into 20 points. NIU scored five points on eight BSU turnovers.

“We’ve had to build our half-court defense,” Ball State coach Tim Buckley said. “We went to the press because we lacked energy. We knew Northern Illinois was a high turnover team. We wanted to get our hands active and try to get turnovers.”

Perry Smith scored a game-high 20 points, 11 of which came from the free-throw line. Smith has shot 9-of-33 from the field in the last two games.

Paulsen added 10 points off the bench for the Huskies.

“I am really proud of our guys,” Buckley said. “We talked about energy all week and Michael Bennett may have been our MVP today. I wish we could credit Peyton’s steal to coaching, but he made a great play and is going to be a good player in this league for a long time.”