The Falcon men’s basketball team lost to the Akron Zips 80-78 on Saturday afternoon, their first road loss to a MAC opponent this season.

The Falcons now sit at 2-2 in MAC play and 11-6 overall after their latest defeat.

“We came up with the stop we needed [on final possession of game],” Falcons head coach Michael Huger said. “We weren’t able to come up with the rebound. That was the difference in the game, we come up with that rebound, we get a chance to take the last shot and that us instead of Akron coming up with that bucket and it hurts, it definitely hurts, but we missed so many free throws that’s the game right there. We were 29 for 43. We’re a 72 percent free throw shooting team and we shoot 67 and we get 43 free throws to their 20. So we took care of business when we should have but we missed free throws and then we couldn’t get the rebound that we needed, we couldn’t get the stops that we needed.”    

The Falcons were paced on offense in this game by freshman guard Justin Turner, who dropped a team high of 30 points in 34 minutes, shooting an efficient .53 percent field goal percentage.

“We have got to be able to make our free throws down the stretch,” Huger said. “We have got to come up with a stop when we need a stop, we have got to come up with a rebound when we need a rebound. We out rebounded them by one by they are a small team. They just wanted it more than we did.”

Junior forward Demajeo Wiggins was strong as usual by putting in 18 points in the effort along with 12 boards.

“They hit some big threes, they hit some big shots during the game,” Huger said. “You get Cotton who comes in (for Akron) and he plays very well. He hits a bunch of shots, he gets some fouls and he played really well for those guys and he was the difference in the game for them. We were able to control (Daniel) Utomi and (Jimond) Ivey hit some big shots for them and that’s the ballgame. It’s frustrating.”

The team will next play on Tuesday night on the road against the Miami RedHawks.