With less than two minutes to play, coach Tim Buckley shouted out "no fouls" as Marshall worked their way up the floor. It wasn't a simple reminder this time, it was an order. The Cardinals were down by nine to the conference's worst offensive team, and Buckley, who has been vocal all game, looked frustrated.
"We played four possessions of defense all day," he said. "Out of 62, we played four. We chose to play four. That was the difference and it was out of reach by then. You can't go basically 37 minutes without playing anybody and then decide in the last three minutes you're going to guard them."
Marshall entered Worthen Arena without a conference win in it's final season in the Mid-American Conference. Ball State had not lost a home game all season, and was on a three-game winning streak.
Things did not turn out as the stat sheet said they would, and the Cardinals (12-7, 7-4 in the MAC) fell to the Thundering Herd (4-16, 1-10 in the MAC) 90- 81.
"You can't win games if you don't (play defense)," Buckley said. "We're not good enough to do that. We are not going to out-score people.
"All the games we have played and we have not defended, we've lost, and that's what happened today."
The game started out innocently enough, as the Cardinals began with a 14-4 run, including four straight 3-pointers from Dennis Trammell. Still, coach Tim Buckley said he knew right away the game was going to be a loss.
"The first couple possessions we didn't guard anybody," Buckley said. "And we weren't going to. I can always tell. I can tell right away. And we just didn't come out of it today. Sometimes we have, sometimes we haven't. Today we just didn't."
The Cardinals gave up 90 points, something they haven't done all season, to a team that averages 67.2 points per game, lowest in the MAC.
"As soon as they started running off baskets, we stopped playing defense," guard Peyton Stovall said. "Nobody was talking on the defensive side of the ball. I just knew right then that we weren't playing Ball State basketball. And if we don't do that, we don't play as a team, we don't win.
Ball State shot 30 of 56 percent from the field, but allowed Marshall to make 32 of 62. Marshall made it to the free throw line 17 times, and only Enoch Bunch missed. The Cardinals, meanwhile, continued their poor play from the charity stripe, making only 11 of 21. Terrance Chapman took five free throws but only made one, and completely missed the basket twice.
"It's really difficult for me because we spend all of our times on free throws and defense," Buckley said. "Literally. We shoot 85 percent from the free throw line every day as a team. But we don't make them in the game, so I've got to figure a way to make that happen."
The first home loss knocked Ball State off the top of the MAC West, a spot the held for only a day after Western Michigan lost to Ohio on Saturday.
Coach Buckley took responsibility for the loss.
"I've got to figure out a way to get them to buy into what's going to help them have success," Buckley said. "So, that falls on me."
The Cardinals move on to face Miami on Wednesday at Worthen Arena.
"It's one game, just one game," Buckley said. "We'll see who the men are and who the boys are. And the men are coming to town."
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