WINONA LAKE - The start and the end were good for Grace. The middle was a completely different story Tuesday in the Lancers' Mid Central Conference opener.

An 11-point Lancer lead in the first few minutes of the game became a 30-30 tie at halftime and eventually moved to a 64-47 second-half deficit. A Grace rally closed the gap at the end, but the Lancers fell short 87-81 to the Knights (9-2, 1-0) at Lancer Gym.

From the 10-minute mark of the first half to the 10-minute mark of the second half, Marian outscored Grace 51-30 to turn around double-digit leads.

"In the last 10 minutes of the first half and the first 10 minutes of the second half, we were passive defensively," Grace coach Jim Kessler said. "They have some good shooters, and they took advantage of things we weren't doing."

The Knights especially took it to the Lancers' defense in the second half, getting their running game going and hitting the high-percentage shots. After shooting 35 percent in the first half, Marian hit on 18 of 24 (75 percent) field goal attempts in the second half.

"The thing that has disappointed me the last couple of games has been our inability to sustain things," Kessler said. "We lose our focus on the court."

Grace whittled away at Marian's 17-point lead late in the game and got to within five, 86-81, when Caleb Gilmer and Brian Christner hit back-to-back three-pointers with 20 seconds left. But the Knights got a big offensive rebound on a missed free throw and were able to run out the clock from there.

"I am disappointed about getting beat on second-effort points," Kessler said. "That is something you'd like to think wouldn't happen. You have a bigger team with good rebounders, but we didn't capitalize on the things we could do as a team."

Marian beat the bigger Lancers on the offensive rebounds 16-11, which resulted in a 15-10 advantage on second-chance points for the Knights.

Also hurting Grace's chances for a rally was having four players foul out. The Lancers committed 31 fouls to Marian's 21 and sent the Knights to the line 40 times, where they hit on 24 of them.

Senior Andy Schmidt had the hot hand for the Lancers, hitting on 10 of 20 shots for 27 points. But after Schmidt, Grace struggled to find someone to step up.

"We were inept at passing the ball and finding the open man," Kessler said. "We have to have some other people contribute. We just weren't patient enough to find those people. That is not what we typically look like."

Grace (7-8) drops to 0-1 in the MCC.

"Its a tough way to start the conference," Kessler said. "This will probably be one of the games that we should have won and didn't. We are going to find out if we want to be players or not."

Grace is at Huntington Saturday. [[In-content Ad]]