Men’s basketball left Chase Gymnasium on Tuesday night defeated, feeling like Concordia University Irvine stole the game from them. The Eagles kept it tight and came within reach of a win, but let the game slip through their fingers in the final minutes, 59-52.

Senior forward Steve Herve was the Eagles’ lead scorer with 10 points and two rebounds. Senior guard Trevor Treinen had nine points and two rebounds. Senior forward Levi Auble contributed eight points, seven rebounds and sophomore guard Michael Bagatourian ended with eight points and five rebounds.

FIERY FIRST HALF

Biola maintained a healthy lead throughout the majority of the first half. Herve took control racking up all 10 of his points in the first half alone. But the Eagles lost their momentum with two minutes left, sending them to the half down 25-24.

The second half showed more promise as Treinen brought the Eagles to a 35-32 lead with a powerful and-one lay-up. However, things fell apart for the Eagles late in the game. They became sloppy with the ball and Concordia took advantage of it. CUI dominated on both ends of the floor, pulling themselves out of a 46-42 hole to win the game by seven.

THE DOWNFALL

“We need to work on handling ball pressure, that was our downfall today,” Treinen said. “We are going to play other teams who are going to pressure us like that so we just gotta clean it up a little bit.”

The Eagles shot just 35.7 percent from the field, and a minuscule 7.7 percent from the 3-point line.

“We shot too many threes. We were 1-13. Most of those were good shots, we just didn’t hit them. They out-rebounded us. That was [also] a big factor in the game. We thought we could outrebound them but we couldn’t,” said head coach David Holmquist.

Despite weak shooting, the Eagles almost made up for it on the defensive end.

“We played aggressive, our defense was really good today, a lot of their points were just off turnovers in transition. We need to pick up our ball handling and we need to value possessions more,” Treinen said.

The Eagles (8-8 PacWest, 12-10 overall) will hit the road to take on Fresno Pacific University on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.