Players from the women's basketball team contemplate message from their coach. Lisa Garcia / The Lumberjacks

Playing without injured freshman guard Tyler Stephens-Jenkins, the Jacks were unable to defend their home court in a 64-61 loss to Weber State (WSU) Feb. 11 and a 71-64 defeat to Idaho State (ISU) Feb. 13.

“Our struggles right now are more mental,” said sophomore guard Caty Huntington. “We just need to take it one game at a time and do what we do best.”

In their loss to the Bengals, the Jacks continued their season-long struggle at the free-throw line — converting only five of 15 attempts from the charity stripe — and it ultimately cost them a chance at a weekend split.

Junior guard Vickie Toney looks for an open teammate in the Lumberjacks' 71-64 loss to the Idaho State Bengals Feb. 13. Despite her injury in the previous week's game, she is back on the court. Jennifer Hilderbrand / The Lumberjack

After falling behind by 14 at the 5:29 mark in the first half, the Jacks responded with a 19-3 scoring spurt to briefly take a 34-32 lead two minutes into the second half. But the Bengals snatched the lead back on their ensuing possession and held off any sort of NAU rally for the rest of the game.

“We lost the game at the free-throw line,” Kelly said. “It’s really hard to look at how important this game was for us, and to have it slip away from 15 feet away from the basket with nobody defending you — this is a loss that will haunt us for a long time.”

Huntington led the Jacks with 20 points, and freshman guard Amy Patton recorded her ninth double-double of the season with 17 points and 10 rebounds.

Two nights earlier against Weber State, the Lumberjacks rallied back from a five-point halftime deficit with an 8-0 run to open the second half. But the Wildcats responded with a 19-6 run of their own to take back the lead, grabbing a seven-point advantage with eight minutes to go.

The Jacks were down three with under 10 seconds left when Huntington stole the ball; she immediately threw up a shot from just inside half-court that clanged off the rim with seven seconds remaining to give the Wildcats the victory.

“There were 35 seconds left, and with the shot clock at 30 [seconds], we knew that we could get the ball back with five seconds left,” said Patton, who led the Jacks with 22 points, seven rebounds and a career-high five steals. “Hunt[ington] had a great steal, but I think she didn’t know how much time was left on the clock.”

Although the Jacks forced 21 turnovers, the squad only managed nine points from their bench compared to 29 points from the visiting bench.

“I thought we played hard, but not smart,” Kelly said. “Our shot selection wasn’t good tonight, and we didn’t make smart decisions with the ball at critical times.”

The Lumberjacks now sit at eighth place in the conference with records of 5-19 overall and 3-8 in the Big Sky. NAU will travel to the Northwest to take on the conference’s top two teams. Their next game is Feb. 19 at Portland State; NAU defeated Portland 86-80 Jan. 16 in Flagstaff.

“We’re at gut-check time,” Kelly said. “Every loss puts us farther and farther back, so we really need to do some soul searching if we’re going to have any chance of making it to the [conference] tournament for the 15th straight year.”