GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Michigan Tech Huskies men’s basketball team suffered a heartbreaking 73-71 overtime loss at Davenport in an always-physical GLIAC showdown at the DU Student Center on Saturday afternoon. Tomashek produced a game-high 37 points for his ninth 30-point game of his career.

“Clearly we weren’t in the right mindset to play—I think defensively we were fine, I don’t think we scored a basket until the 10-minute mark and we would’ve been even closer if we could make a free throw which we didn’t all night,” said Huskies coach Josh Buettner. “Our biggest bodies and best rebounders were all fouled out down the stretch. It was frustrating and with all that, there were several times we could’ve gone away and taken the loss but we kept coming back and had chances down the stretch to put it away but we didn’t make our free throws.

“Everyone in this league is really good and you don’t skip steps, we’re not going to automatically be a championship team because we’ve been playing pretty well.”

The Huskies (8-4. 3-1 GLIAC) didn’t make a field goal in the opening 12 minutes and showed struggles from the foul line, making just three free throws in eight attempts. Despite the cold start, Davenport (5-7, 1-3 GLIAC) was only ahead 11-6 when MTU connected on its first field goal.

Michigan Tech closed out the first half with a two-point advantage (28-26) with 12 points from junior guard Marcus Tomashek and eight points from first-year guard Ty Fernholz despite amassing 12 personal fouls in the opening frame while drawing eight fouls on the Panthers.

The Huskies had the lead for the first few minutes of the second half before falling behind, with Davenport sustaining a two-possession advantage from five minutes to go to the final 36 seconds when senior forward Pete Calcaterra converted on a putback with 14 seconds to play. Two seconds later, Tomashek stole the ball from the Panthers with four seconds to play, converted on a highly contested layup with a final-second shot from DU hitting the front iron to send the contest to overtime.

With 13 seconds to play in overtime, the Panthers got two free throws to fall from Joey Cabana to make it a 3-point game (71-68). The Huskies called a timeout after crossing halfcourt and got the shot they were looking for with junior guard Josh Terrian connecting on a corner three with seven seconds to go. The Panthers quickly got downhill and Jovan Tucker called game with a pull-up jump as time expired to hand the Huskies its first conference loss and snap their seven-game win streak.

In total, five players fouled out, three from the Huskies and the other two from the Panthers.

Calcaterra recorded a team-leading eight boards.

Freshman guard Joey Cabana led a trio of Panthers in double-figure scoring with 21 points as Matyas Vrabel had a team-high 13 rebounds.

UP NEXT

The Huskies continue league play next week, trekking to Northern Michigan on Thursday (7:30 p.m.) before hosting the newest GLIAC member, Roosevelt, on Saturday at the SDC Gymnasium slated for a 2 p.m. tipoff.