NIU falls to Wisconsin-Green Bay

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Ryan Tillema scored a career-high 33 points and pulled down 8 rebounds to lead Wisconsin-Green Bay past Northern Illinois 86-75 on Saturday.

Mike Schachtner added 18 points for Green Bay (7-4) which snapped a two-game losing streak and won the only home game it played in the month of December.

Darion Anderson came off the bench to lead Northern Illinois (2-9) with 15 points and five assists. Michael Patton added 14 points and Michael Hart had 11.

The Phoenix was badly out of sync on offense in the early going, with only 4 field goals and 15 points over the first 12:40 of the first half.

But Green Bay outscored Northern Illinois 22-9 over the final 7:20 and went into halftime with a 37-31 lead thanks to Tillema's buzzer-beating 3-pointer. Green Bay never trailed in the second half.

Northern Illinois didn't go quietly in the second half, however, cutting the Phoenix lead to 4 on multiple occasions.

But after the Huskies closed to within 56-52 at the 11:15 mark of the second half, 5 points by Tillema sparked a quick 7-0 run to give the Phoenix a double-digit lead.

Terry Evans scored 10 points, including an off-the-backboard alley-oop dunk from Rahmon Fletcher that seemed to put an exclamation point on the second half for the Phoenix.

Randy Berry also added 8 points and 8 rebounds for Green Bay before fouling out.

A total of 53 fouls in the game made it difficult for either side to get into a rhythm, but the Phoenix took advantage of the situation by hitting 28-of-33 free throws (85 percent) compared to just 16-of-26 (62 percent) for Northern Illinois.