BY CHACE DAVY, Staff Reporter

A clearly disappointed Greg Sparling paced back and forth after the Wildcats’ most recent loss, an 85-76 game against the visiting Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks.

“It doesn’t feel good at all,” Sparling said, Central’s head coach.

Sparling had just watched his Wildcats, who at one point in the game were up 26 points, let a lead slowly slip by them.

“I just looked up and we were down by one,” senior forward JB Pillard said.

Pillard led the Wildcats in scoring with 19 points.

It was the second straight game in which the Wildcats watched a double-digit halftime lead evaporate, and their third loss in four games. The loss drops the Wildcats to 11-11 overall, and 7-7 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference play.

The Wildcats are now sixth in the GNAC standings behind Western Oregon, who they lost to last week.

Saturday’s game certainly started out strong for the Wildcats, who quickly jumped out to a 21-7 lead. The Wildcats held the Nanooks without a field goal for almost seven minutes while they went on a 16-2 scoring run, giving them a 41-15 lead.

However, the Nanooks, powered by a 26-point game by sophomore Mike Stepovich off the bench, went on a 16-2 run of their own to finish off the first half, cutting the lead down to 12. Before the game, Stepovich had averaged only one point per game.

“We got content, got a large lead, our guys got selfish, and took poor shots,” Sparling said.

The team seems baffled by their recent problems on the court, especially since they had won six of their previous eight before this span.

“I have no clue what happened,” sophomore guard Jordan Russell said.

With only four games left in the regular season, the next couple games are key toward Central getting a good seed in the GNAC playoffs.

The Wildcats head on a two-game road trip this week, playing Simon Fraser and Western Washington before coming back home for their final two games against Seattle Pacific and Montana State Billings.