FINDLAY, Ohio – The Northern Michigan men's basketball team dropped a 78-69 decision at No. 15 Findlay in Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics Conference action Saturday.

The loss drops the Wildcats to 1-6 overall with a 0-3 GLIAC record. The Oilers improved to 5-1 overall with a 2-1 league mark. 

Junior forward Chavis Mattison came off the bench for the Wildcats to lead all players with 21 points going 7-10 from the field, 3-4 from three point range and 4-4 from the free throw line. Mattison also led NMU with seven rebounds.

Junior guard Ethan Blackwell added 18 points for NMU while junior forward Justin Newell added 14 rounding out the double-digit scorers for Northern Michigan. 

Dylan Kaufman led the Oilers with 20 points.

Findlay had a 43-33 lead going into the break, but Northern Michigan outscored the Oilers 36-35 in the second half. 

"It was a day where we certainly did some good things. I thought we competed well in a really tough environment as well as we have competed all year," said NMU head coach Bill Sall. "We made a bunch of errors in the game which you can't do if you want to beat a good team on the road. We have to move forward and learn from those mistakes but overall I was happy with the effort."

Northern Michigan went on a 10-2 run midway through the second half to cut the Findlay lead to four 59-55. The run was capped by free throws from freshman forward Dorrell Foster and a jumper from Blackwell with 9:37 left in the game.

The Wildcats shot 41 percent from the floor connecting on 25-61 of their field goals. NMU was 6-17 from three-point range (35.3%) and was 13-18 from the free throw line (72.2%). 

Findlay outrebounded Northern Michigan 41-35 and edged the Wildcats 30-28 in points in the paint.

The Wildcats return to action at 8 p.m. on Monday facing Hillsdale in GLIAC action.