It hadn’t even been eight days since Northwestern looked like a young team that was turning the corner.

Last week, the Wildcats went blow for blow with No. 15 Michigan State and nearly knocked off a DePaul team having its best season in over a decade.

This week, NU was on the other side of one of the biggest upsets in the NCAA this season. By beating NU (5-7, 0-2 Big Ten) 67-66 on Sunday, Hartford (7-7) became the lowest ranked team in the NCAA to beat a power conference opponent this year.

“They came out with more energy than us,” sophomore forward Miller Kopp said. “It showed. They made shots and were confident.”

Almost two months after losing the season opener to Merrimack, the Cats had their worst loss of the season, falling to KenPom’s 319th ranked team. NU became the only high-major to lose two games this season to one of KenPom’s 75 worst NCAA teams. The Hawks lost to Merrimack by four points in November, but both teams won at Welsh-Ryan Arena this season.

The game Sunday against Hartford was close, but the Cats fell apart in the last two minutes.

NU led by five points with 1:55 left after Kopp made a contested layup. But the Cats didn’t score the rest of the way, watching Hartford go on a 6-0 run to close the game.

Freshman guard Boo Buie was asked to be the hero late, going one-on-one on the last two meaningful possessions. But he missed a contested jumper on the first one and fumbled the ball out of bounds on the second, paving the way for Hartford forward Hunter Marks to score the game-winning basket.

Marks attacked NU’s sophomore guard Ryan Greer and easily got to the rim, and he finished through contact to give the Hawks a one-point lead with one second left in the game.

NU couldn’t get a shot off when the team got the ball back. The Cats ran the desperation play that had worked three years ago against Michigan, but grad transfer guard Pat Spencer’s full court pass was deflected as the clock ran out.

“You get it to 66-61 there with a couple minutes to go, you’ve got to either get a stop, or score, or both,” Collins said. “We did neither. We had some empty possessions offensively and weren’t able to get any stops in the last three minutes.”

NU had to close the game without two of the four guards in the team’s normal rotation. Junior Anthony Gaines missed his second consecutive game with an upper-body injury, and senior A.J. Turner took a hit early in the second half that kept him sidelined the rest of the way.

Kopp led the Cats with a career-high 24 points, including 13 in the final twelve minutes of the game. The Hawks led by 6 points with twelve minutes left in the game, but Kopp’s scoring spurt gave the Cats a brief lead they couldn’t hold down the stretch.

But the sophomore forward didn’t get the ball in either of NU’s last three possessions, and the Cats didn’t get an open shot in the final two minutes.

“In the second half we played really hard, or else we wouldn’t have been up five,” Collins said. “But once we took the lead, their kids had great poise and great courage to make those plays in the last few minutes.”

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