By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

MACOMB, Ill. — Lucas Lorenzen’s potential game-tying 3-pointer bounced off the rim and into the arms of SIUE’s Darrion Baker.

As Baker called a timeout to avoid turning the ball over on a 5-second call, Lorenzen looked up at the Western Hall scoreboard, then dropped his head in frustration.

A chance for Western Illinois to get a breakthrough win before Christmas had escaped the Leathernecks.

The 66-61 loss on Monday dropped the Leathernecks to 4-9 overall, 0-2 in the Ohio Valley Conference, and sent them into a short holiday break lamenting the game that got away.

“Yeah, it’s frustrating,” said forward Antwaun Massey. “I feel like we need every win. But this one would have been big.”

The Leathernecks had a 51-37 lead with 8:40 to play, but couldn’t contain SIUE (8-5, 1-1) the rest of the game.

“For us to win, we’ve got to be as close to perfect as possible for 40 minutes,” Western Illinois coach Chad Boudreau said. “And I thought we were as close to perfect as possible for 32 minutes. And for eight minutes it got away from us.”

“They just ramped up their energy,” said Lorenzen, who scored all of his team-high 19 points in the second half. “And we failed to match it.”

The Leathernecks opened conference play with a 92-76 loss at Lindenwood, but came out in this game with an energy that allowed them to control the pace until SIUE’s late run.

“We’re growing a lot as a team, just with our chemistry,” Lorenzen said. “I mean, we’re growing so much, and I think that that’s what helped us get that lead. But we needed to close out the game.”

“It started in practice, and we stacked days up until this game, and it transferred over,” Massey said.

“We are coming together offensively,” Boudreau said. “We’re better defensively, we’re a lot better. We were very physical. We did a good job of guarding them for 32, 33 minutes in this game. We did a good job offensively — getting the ball, moving, attacking, getting downhill, getting to the (free-throw) line, getting good shots. There were a lot of positives for 32 minutes.”

The Leathernecks got just one field goal over the final six minutes. SIUE’s full-court pressure rattled them — they were called for one five-second violation and nearly got a second.

“Shots weren’t falling,” Boudreau said. “We had some good looks, shots didn’t fall. And then defensively, we just couldn’t string together enough stops. There was about a four-minute stretch there — I’ll have to go back and look, but I’m pretty sure we never got a stop in that stretch. They either scored or got fouled and shot free throws.”

“They got the momentum and we couldn’t get it going on the defensive end,” Massey said.

SIUE tied the game at 60 with two minutes to play on Jack Campion’s 3-pointer, then the Leathernecks turned the ball over and Jo Valrie was fouled. Valrie hit two free throws with 1:47 left, then Ring Malith, who had a game-high 24 points, made two with 1:17 left to put the Cougars up 64-60.

Massey made the second of two free throws with 53 seconds left, then the Leathernecks had the chance to tie after forcing a shot-clock violation. Lorenzen, who had scored 12 consecutive points earlier in the half, had an open look on the 3-pointer, but his shot missed.

“In the end,” Boudreau said, “we just had that one stretch that killed us.”

The Leathernecks get some time away from campus, returning on Saturday to prepare for a New Year’s Day road game at UT-Martin.

“We’ve just got to come back with a lot of energy and just ramp it up right away,” Lorenzen said. “We can’t just sit down for a couple of days and have lazy practices. We’ve got to go at it right away and be prepared, because we’ve got to get this going.”

Top photo: WIU’s Lucas Lorenzen drives the ball up court in Monday’s game against SIUE. (Photo by John Lovretta)