CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Milwaukee men's basketball team fell behind early in the first half and could never get on track, falling by a final score of 70-53 to Cleveland State Saturday afternoon at the Wolstein Center.
 
The Panthers (10-11, 5-4 Horizon League) cut into a large halftime deficit against the Vikings (8-14, 4-5 Horizon League), but could get no closer than 15 points the rest of the way.
 
"We weren't making shots early, so that was difficult for our guys to overcome and that carried over to the defensive end," head coach Pat Baldwin said. "We weren't very good defensively and gave them 22 points in the paint in the first half and we just couldn't recover. We tried to make a run at the start of the second half and just didn't have enough."
 
Darius Roy led the team in scoring with 11 points. Te'Jon Lucas and Josh Thomas finished with nine.
 
A cold shooting day from the floor thwarted any major comeback chance, with Milwaukee connecting on fewer than 30 percent of its field goals on the afternoon.
 
"We have some mature guys on our team. We have some leadership on our team," Baldwin said. "My message to them is that we have done a good job putting ourselves in a position to be successful with the games that we have won. Let's learn from this one and get ready to go our next game out."
 
Down 43-21 at the break, Milwaukee came out of the locker room and netted the first seven points to quickly get the deficit down to 15 at 43-28. From there, the comeback stalled. The Panthers again fell behind by over 20 later in the period and were back within 15 again with 10 minutes to play, but that would be as close as it would get.
 
It was a rough first half offensively for the Panthers, connecting on just 25 percent of their shots while slowly falling behind as the half progressed.
 
The Vikings scored the first eight points and led 16-8, as early MKE shots continued to rim out. Six in a row forced a timeout at 20-8, but the lead grew to 27-10 with CSU shooting over 70 percent at that point in the period.
 
The lead reached its highest on a three-point play right before the horn, with Milwaukee trailing by 22 at 43-21.
 
Despite the cold shooting night from the floor, MKE finished 19-of-20 from the free throw line, the sixth-best single-game effort (95%) in program history.
 
Up next, the Panthers head back to Wisconsin for a challenging homestand, welcoming the top two teams in the Horizon League. Up first is a contest against Wright State Friday, set for a 7 p.m. tip.