NAPERVILLE, Ill. - Carthage College had their two-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday night, as the Red Men fell at North Central College to start the new year, 77-67.

The loss drops the Red Men to 7-5 overall and to .500 at 2-2 in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin, while the Cardinals improve to 8-4 and 2-2 in the league.

Carthage opened the game struggling from the field and an 0-for-7 start, which quickly put the Red Men down 11-0 just over three minutes into the game.  Shooting struggles continued for a large portion of the first half with the Red Men never being able to cut the deficit to single-digits and North Central building as large as an 18-point lead with 2:27 left in the half.  

Despite being outshot 53.1%-to-32.3% from the field in the first, the Red Men managed a late run to draw within 13 at the break, 40-27.  Carthage was led by Brad Perry with six points on 3-4 shooting and Mike Canady ended a 0-6 three-point shooting half for the Red Med with buzzer beater to end the half.

Still trailing by 13 with 14:57 remaining in the game, the Red Men went on an 8-0 run over 3:20, with four points from Jordan Thomas, to get back to within five at 51-46.  The Cardinals would answer however, with an 11-0 run of their own to reassert their lead and going up 62-46 with 8:03 left.  

Carthage would once again get the deficit to as few as six with 4:04 remaining, however another 9-0 run would extend the lead to 15 before a pair of free throws from Brad Kruse and another three from Canady closed out the ten-point defeat.

Jordan Thomas led four Red Men in double-figures with 18 points, followed by Brad Kruse with 14, Brad Perry with 11 and Mike Canady with ten.

As a team, the Red Men finished shooting 41.8% on 23-55 from the field, but gave up a season worse 51.6% to the Cardinals, as they knocked down 32-of-their-62 field goal attempts.

Following the loss, head coach Bosko Djurickovic stated, "They are a very good, experienced basketball team and we probably helped them be that kind of a team.  We did not play well tonight.  Probably didn't prepare as well as we should have over the past couple days.  I thought we had a good idea of their offense and defense but our effort wasn't as good as it needs to be.    When you are playing a contending team, in a darn good league, you have to get off to a good start and we didn't tonight.  So far this year we have done better job getting off the blocks.  That was an issue that we had last year, but so far this year we didn't have that problem.  We have to do a better job defensively.  We haven't given up 52% from the field in a long time to the opponents but we did today."

Alex Sorenson led all players, as the Cardinals center scored 28 points on 13-21 shooting in the win.

The Red Men will return to action on the road in a non-conference showdown with the Illinois Institute of Technology on Saturday in Chicago.  Tip-off is set for 7:00 p.m.