DE PERE, Wisconsin – The St. Thomas men’s basketball team’s season ended in heartbreaking fashion with a 71-70 loss on a game-winning buzzer beater by Northwestern guard Porter Morrell in the opening round of the NCAA tournament Friday night.

The No. 3-ranked Tommies led by 3 points with 20 seconds remaining in the game, but Eagle guard Cody Sprenger hit a game-tying 3-pointer. St. Thomas guard Grant Shaeffer answered at the opposite end with an off-balance runner that put St. Thomas ahead 70-68 with fewer than seven seconds left. Morrell knocked down a prayer at the buzzer, sending the Eagles into the second round.

“Great win for our program,” Northwestern coach Tim Grosz said about Northwestern and the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference’s first ever NCAA tournament victory. “In those situations, we don’t call timeouts. We just wanted to get the ball inbounds and push it and try to get a great look. Obviously, Porter (Morrell) got a good look and knocked it down.”

Coach John Tauer said the unpredictability of “March Madness” played a big part in the game’s final moments.

“In hindsight you want to score with less (time), but that’s also hard to predict. I tried to take a timeout,” Tauer said. “I thought I was hollering pretty clearly that we wanted one to get our defense set because in that situation … I think getting it and go is the right strategy.”

“I didn’t get the timeout for whatever reason … that said, I thought we played solid defense. We contested the shot,” Tauer said. “They hit a really, really tough shot at the buzzer.”

The Eagles came out of the gate hot, shooting 9 for 10 from the field, resulting in an 11-point lead. The Tommies managed to creep back into the game and make it a 2-point deficit at the end of the first half.

“Tonight didn’t go the way we wanted. I want to give a lot of credit to Northwestern. They shot the ball unbelievably well the first half to get off to a good start,” Tauer said. “I thought our guys battled back and put ourselves in a good position up 5 in the second half.”

Northwestern built on its lead by starting the second half with a 6-0 run, but once again the Tommies managed to overcome the deficit and take a 5-point lead with 4:18 to play in the game.

Guard Marcus Alipate led the charge in the second half, scoring 10 of his 12 points, including two consecutive 3-pointers, in the game’s final frame.

“I shot the same. I think the shots that I was taking just went in – you go through that,” Alipate said. “If you’re not hitting your shots, keep shooting, and luckily enough in the second half (my) teammates got me the ball in open positions.”

St. Thomas took advantage of its size in the post with forwards Ryan Saarela and Conner Nord. Saarela led the Tommies in scoring and rebounding with 15 points and 8 boards, which propelled the Tommies to a 35-28 advantage in the rebounding column. Nord scored 5 of his 13 points in less than a minute, which helped St. Thomas to its largest lead of the game.

“They’re a tough team, they battled. I mean, they kept balls alive with numerous tips, but I mean they used that to their advantage,” Nord said about the post play. “We were bigger than them, but they hustled to the ball and got a lot of loose balls.”

With the victory, the Northwestern Eagles will play the Elmhurst Bluejays Saturday night.

“Obviously not the outcome we were looking for tonight. (We are) very, very disappointed. I just told the team there aren’t any words to make it any easier. This is part of the nature of sports,” Tauer said. “It’s a heartbreaking defeat in many ways.”

Jordan Kruger can be reached at krug6172@stthomas.edu.