Box Score BELMONT, Calif. — The Dominican University of California men's basketball team started slow on Saturday and a late, great second-half comeback fell short in a 71-62 loss to Northwest Nazarene University in the Notre Dame de Namur Classic.

Trailing by 19 points, 59-40, with 8:12 to play, the Penguins (0-7) staged a furious comeback to cut the Crusaders' lead to 10. The rally started with foul shots by Jammall Clark and Myles Carrillo and a basket by Ricky Wofford. Then offensive rebound buckets by Clark and Xander McNally knifed the deficit to 10, 59-49, with 4:20 to go.

Five times Dominican closed the gap to eight points in the final four minutes but Northwest Nazarene (4-1) out of Idaho prevailed, thanks in great part to 16-of-19 shooting from the foul line.

Jacob Noisat scored a season-high 21 points for the Penguins, 17 in the second half. Clark added 15 points and Carrillo, the Pacific West Conference leader in steals, contributed 11 points, a game-high seven rebounds and two steals.

“It's one of those things where the guys played with a sense of urgency and they saw they were getting success with some defensive stops,” said Dominican Head Coach Booker T. Harris. “But it's hard to win and it's hard work when you have to do that [come from behind] all the time.”

Minus leading scorer and three-point shooter Ryan McIntosh, who was second in the PacWest in 3-point shooting percentage (.625) when he suffered a probable season-ending right wrist injury in the first half of Friday's loss to Sonoma State, Dominican dug itself a hole early in the game against NNU.  The Penguins missed their first five shots, committed six fouls and made seven turnovers in the first six minutes while the Crusaders took a 10-0 lead.

“At the start, guys have opportunities and they need to take advantage of those opportunities,” Harris said. “We were a little passive and we are more successful when we are an aggressive team.”

Mark Lewis netted the Penguins' first points at the 13:21 mark of the first half then, about two minutes later, Clark entered the game for the first time and sparked Dominican.

Clark scored eight straight points and forced a turnover in a three-minute span but the Penguins couldn't make much of a dent in the Crusaders' lead. Clark scored 10 points in seven minutes yet the rest of his teammates managed to make only four of 17 shots from the floor in the first half and Dominican trailed 31-18.

In the second half, the Penguins made a run at NNU, cutting the Crusaders' advantage to 10 points, 35-25, on a layup by Dartanyon Meggs. But NNU's Andy Maxwell and Anthony Golden netted back-to-back-to-back 3-pointers to push its margin back to 15.

Dominican, meanwhile, missed its first seven 3-pointers before Lewis swished one with 11:31 left in the game and the Penguins behind 52-38. The Penguins outscored the Crusaders 44-40 in the second half, even though the Crusaders shot 57 percent from the floor and JB Pillard notched a game-high 22 points.

After a season-opening seven-game road trip, the Penguins will make their home season debut on Saturday, December 3 at the Conlan Center versus Holy Names University.  Game time is 7:00 p.m. and there will be live audio available at http://radio.dominican.edu and live video available at http://www.dominicanathletics.com/livevideo.