Ashland, WI - MLC men's basketball faced off against the Northland Lumberjacks for their second matchup of the season. The two squads previously met on December 9th, when the Knights lost 65-52. In that game, MLC was unable to keep up with the depth of Northland and fell to the Lumberjacks. On Saturday afternoon, MLC managed to stay close throughout the 40 minutes of action and took the lead at several moments in the second half, but ultimately fell to Northland 78-75.

    MLC (2-18, 0-10) fought tough in the first half, but trailed Northland 31-21 at the 3:54 mark. The Knights would then turn things up defensively and went on an 11-2 run to come within two points, making it 33-31. The Knights did a nice job of breaking the Northland press and drew shooting fouls near the basket. The Lumberjacks would answer the run with several baskets and led MLC 40-33 going into halftime.

    Northland opened up the second half with a 14-point lead, as the Lumberjacks came out of the break shooting the ball well. From there, MLC responded from the double-digit deficit with key 3-point shots from Micah Kieselhorst and Ethan Kjenstad. The corner 3-pointer from Kjenstad pulled the Knights within one point (57-56) at the 13:46 mark. The freshman followed up the triple with a turnaround jumper to give the Knights their first lead of the game 58-56. Both teams would trade baskets from that point on and the Knights would expand their lead to 5 points, after a transition layup from Kieselhorst made it 70-65.

    The Lumberjacks tightened up defensively in the final 5 minutes and their full court press seemed to disrupt MLC's timing offensively. Ina addition, The Lumberjacks answered their deficit at the charity stripe and with tough points inside, as their leading scorer Jordan Brennan hit key free throws and a short corner jumper to give Northland a 78-75 lead with 2:23 remaining. After that bucket from Brennan, neither team scored again and the Knights would have several opportunities to tie or take the lead, including a 3-point attempt from Kjenstad at the buzzer.

    Despite the loss for MLC, the Knights gave their best performance of the conference season and remained competitive deep into the second half. MLC did shoot the ball well as a team going 25-of-61 (41 percent) and received a 20 point performance from both Kieselhorst and Thomas Balge.  Kjenstad also had one of his better games of the year, with a season-high 17 points.

    MLC will look to build some momentum on their effort Saturday and shift their focus to a road game at Beloit on Tuesday February 7th. The game was previously scheduled in December, but was postponed due to bad weather conditions.