ST. PAUL -- The Northwestern College men's basketball team suffered its first loss of the 2010-11 season on Saturday night, losing at the hands of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls 83-65. The Eagles, who led 33-32 at halftime, became the victim of Aaron Anderson's hot shooting en route to the 18-point loss.

Neither team was able to gain much of a solid advantage in the first half, which was evidenced by four ties and just as many lead changes. As soon as NWC had a six-point lead at the 14:03 mark, the Falcons' Danny Johnson cut the Eagles' advantage in half with a three-pointer. Ten minutes later, the game was tied before Wade Chitwood (Grinnell, Iowa/Grinnell)'s (Grinnell, Iowa/Grinnell) free throw with a second left in the period gave the home team the lead at the end of 20 minutes of play.

Consecutive jump shots from Jake Voeltz and Shane Manor switched the lead over to River Falls early in the second half, but a fast break dunk from Brian Lecheler (Abbotsford, Wis./Abbotsford) (Abbotsford, Wis./Abbotsford) capped off Northwestern's momentum with a six-point advantage at 44-38. NWC continued to maintain a three- to five-point lead before the Falcons went on a 12-0 run midway through the period to lead 54-61. Anderson caught fire during River Falls' push, making all four of his three-point attempts to kill any Northwestern attempts to equalize the score. With 4:10 remaining in the game, the Falcons led by 11 points and missed only one of several opportunities at the charity stripe, increasing the score to 18, River Falls' largest lead of the game. That largest lead came at 83-65, which was the final score when the horn sounded.

Northwestern shot a mostly-level 45 percent for the game while a 60-percent performance in the second half gave the Falcons a 51.5 percent mark for all 40 minutes. Thanks much in part to Anderson, River Falls drained 71 percent of its three-point attempts in the final half. The lack of an inside presence hurt NWC, who was out-rebounded 43-30. The Falcons took advantage of their size, out-scoring the Eagles 40-30 in the paint and 10-0 in second chance points.

Chitwood finished the game with 20 points on six of 10 shooting, the team's top individual scoring performance thus far in the 2010-11 campaign. Tom Gisler (Stewartville, Minn./Stewartville) (Stewartville, Minn./Stewartville) joined his fellow sophomore on the all-tournament team after scoring 16 points, making seven of his nine attempts. Lecheler was also over 50 percent on the night, finishing 7-13 for 15 points to go with seven assists and four rebounds.

Anderson wrapped up the game with 15 points, followed by Voeltz's 14 to lead River Falls, who remains undefeated at 3-0 this season.

Northwestern, now 2-1 in 2010-11, will take a couple of days off before resuming its nonconference schedule on Tuesday with a game at Macalester College in St. Paul. The Eagles and Scots will tip off at 7:30 p.m. in Macalester's Leonard Center.