MARION, Ind. -- No. 7-ranked Indiana Wesleyan University men’s basketball nearly stole a win at home but ultimately fell to Marian (Ind.) 73-71 at Luckey Arena on Saturday afternoon.

Freshman guard Bob Peters drilled a 3-pointer from the corner to give Indiana Wesleyan its first lead of the second half 71-69 with 16.8 seconds remaining. Marian came down the court and leading scorer Aaron Evans drove down the lane for what looked to be the game-tying shot attempt. But at the last moment he kicked the ball out to Chad Roberts in the corner and he answered with a 3-pointer to recapture the lead 72-71 and 5.9 seconds left to play. The 3 for Roberts was his only field goal of the afternoon.

“You have to give them credit,” said Indiana Wesleyan head coach Greg Tonagel. “That was a big time shot that kid hit. We had come back and if we would have won it would have been a game we had stole. I didn’t think we deserved to win this basketball game.”

The Wildcats still had a chance to win the game. A long inbound pass went to Jordan Weidner and he drove to the basket. He was surrounded by three Knights and the ball would hit off his leg as they swarmed him for a turnover.

Nate Bubash quickly fouled Jess Chadwell with 2.6 seconds left and he hit 1-of-2 free throws for a 73-71 advantage. IWU inbounded the ball but Bubash slipped just shy of midcourt for a travel with 2.1 seconds on the clock. Weidner fouled Nick Achille with 1.1 seconds to go and Achille would miss both free throws. Indiana Wesleyan grabbed the rebound and called timeout to set up the final shot attempt.

Bubash threw the ball deep and tried to hit RJ Mahurin right in front of the IWU bench, but the long throw would be out of Mahurin’s reach and out of bounds to secure the win for Marian (7-2, 3-1 CL).

The undoing of the Wildcats was the 3-point shooting by the Knights. The Knights hit just 3-of-12 of their 3-point attempts in the first 34 minutes of the game. But they got hot to end the contest as they drilled 5-of-7 attempts in the final 6:03 of the game.

“We kept giving them open looks,” said Tonagel. “They were 6-of-10 [from 3-point range] in the second half and every one of them came because a guard got deep in the lane and then we were forced to rotate. [Chadwell] had great composure to hit that last shot but like all 6 3’s in the second half, it came down to our ability to not keep the ball out of the lane. We could not keep the ball in front of us.”

Indiana Wesleyan (12-4, 2-2 CL) never led in the second half until the Peters 3-pointer. Prior to that basket, Marian held a lead of seven points on three different occasions, including with less than six minutes in the game.

Weidner led all players with 23 points and 6 assists. He was 5-of-14 shooting but was 11-of-12 from the foul line. DJ Bettinger finished with 13 points, RJ Mahurin added 12 points, and Bob Peters scored 11 points off the bench.

Indiana Wesleyan will take to the road for both of their Crossroads League games next week. The first of those is at Huntington (Ind.) on Tuesday night. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.