After a strong start to the season, Northwestern has hit a bit of a speed bump to open up the second half of play.

The Tigers dropped their third straight game, falling to Notre Dame of Green Pond, 72-61 on Monday.

The loss comes on the heels of losses to Moravian Academy and Southern Lehigh and drops the Tigers to 6-5 in the Colonial League and 8-6 overall.

Also lost during that streak was big-man Luke Hallman, who hurt his ankle against Southern Lehigh and will be examined today to determine how long he’ll be out. The early prognosis is that Hallman will miss about two weeks, but coach Billy Hallman is hopeful to get him back a little ahead of that schedule for a game against rival Northern Lehigh next Thursday.

Without Hallman, Northwestern was hurt on the boards, but Deven Bollinger picked up much of the responsibility and contributed with both his rebounding and scoring.

“We’ve been challenging him for the last week or so and he stepped up tonight, he grew up tonight. He should be our guy, we want him to be our guy,” said coach Hallman. “Tonight, he was scoring with the ball, but also rebounding, so moving forward that’s a good sign.”

The Crusaders opened up a 16-8 lead early in the game and Hallman called a timeout, which seemed to work wonders, because his team rallied back with eight unanswered points to tie the game. Cunningham was able to drain a shot just before the end of the quarter to put Notre Dame up 18-16 going into the second quarter when they would open up their lead to as much as 14 points and led 39-27 at the half.

This time, there was no rally for Northwestern. Notre Dame stayed in control the rest of the way with its largest lead reaching 16 points.

“This was one that we wanted, because we wanted to get back on track,” said Hallman. “We have ourselves in a good spot after the first half of the season and we’re trying to get moving here in the second half, but Notre Dame is a good basketball team, so we’ll take some positives out of this.”

TOUGH ROAD ... The Tigers’ last three losses have come against Colonial League opponents with a combined league record of 21-12 and an overall mark of 25-18. “We’ve had three tough games here. I was happy with our effort tonight, but we have to clean some things up; taking care of the basketball. Communicating and getting to our spots defensively, but I was still encouraged tonight,” said Hallman. “The Southern Lehigh game was a complete breakdown and now the guys will get a little bit of a break, because we don’t play again until Saturday.”

SCORING LEADERS ... Northwestern had three players in double-digit scoring, with sophomore Devin Thomas leading the way with 18. Bollinger had 15 and Sam Yadush scored 12. The Crusaders (9-2, 12-4) also had three players in double-digits with Jaden Cunningham scoring 17, Filippo Baldo contributing 15 and Zach DeFoe adding 12.

NOTRE DAME

Baldo 6-2-4-15, Cunningham 6-3-3-17, Cornish 3-2-2-8, Hohl 0-0-0-0, DeMeuse 0-2-2-2, DeFoe 6-0-0-12, Omick 3-0-0-7, Gibki 0-0-0-0, Korpics 1-1-2-3, Sanders 3-2-8-8

NORTHWESTERN

Hebelka 0-0-0-0, Seyfried 2-2-2-6, Yadush 5-1-2-12, Mengel 1-0-0-3, Bollinger 7-1-2-15, McCann 1-0-0-3, Henry 0-0-0-0, Perich 0-0-0-0, Thomas 7-4-9-18, Holmes 2-0-0-4, Castrine 0-0-0-0

Notre Dame 18 21 13 20 – 72

Northwestern 16 11 12 22 – 61

Three-pointers: ND – Cunningham 2, DeFoe 2, Baldo 1, Omick 1. NW – Yadush 1, Mengel 1, McCann 1