Long scoring droughts are becoming Cleveland State's Achilles heel.
CSU squandered a 13-point second-half lead and might have blown its chances of hosting a first round game in next month's Horizon League tournament with a 66-59 setback to Green Bay on Friday night at the Wolstein Center.
With the loss, CSU drops to 12-15 and 4-9 in the Horizon League. They are two-and-a-half games back of Illinois-Chicago (6-6 HL) and three games back of Youngstown State (7-6 HL), who defeated Milwaukee 94-80 on Friday. UIC travels to Loyola of Chicago on Saturday.
"We let another one get away," Vikings head coach Gary Waters said. "We went through a stretch again where we couldn't score. And we didn't defend as well as we did in the first half."
The Vikings held a 40-27 lead just 49 seconds into the second half.
Then, it all fell apart for CSU.
It all started after Green Bay called a timeout and switched to a zone defense. The zone stymied CSU. The Vikings would go the next 8:59 without a basket.
"I really don't know why we struggle against the zone," said CSU's Charlie Lee, who scored 15 of his 18 points in the first half. "The zone kind of slowed me down because they had two people on me all the time."
The Phoenix scored 15 straight points to take a 42-40 lead on a pair of free throws from freshman forward Jordan Fouse.
"We turned the ball over about three times in that period of time," Waters said. "What it does is it unnerves everyone. Who we got out there is all we got. We got to deal with that until its changed."