The Dominican University men's basketball team came up short, 87-84, against the Rockford University Regents on Saturday afternoon at the Igini Sports Forum, falling to 2-3 on the season and 0-2 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC).  Rockford's Kivontay Shaw buried a wing three with 1.7 seconds to play after the Stars had erased an 11-point second half deficit.
 
"I thought we competed really hard the final eight minutes of the game," said Mark White, the Stars' head men's basketball coach, following his team's last second loss. "Unfortunately, the lack of effort and mental focus prior to that really hurt us."
 
After a back-and-forth first half that saw the Regents take a 43-41 lead at the break on a last second put-back, the Stars found themselves trailing 71-60 with just under nine minutes remaining in the second half.
 
Jackson Smith sparked a 13-2 Dominican run with a three that spanned just over three minutes and was capped by a KJ Redfield three, evening the score at 73-73 with 4:48 to play.
 
After a Rockford bucket put the Regents back in front, Dylan Anderson buried another three for the Stars, giving Dominican their first lead of the second half, 76-75 with 3:05 remaining.
 
Dominican played with the lead for the next two and a half minutes until Vincent Eugene's and-one with 39 seconds to go put the Regents ahead, 84-82.
 
On the Stars' next possession, Tyler Guest scored off the glass, evening the score at 84-84 with under thirty seconds to play.  Rockford elected to not use one of its three remaining timeouts and set up the offense with Eugene finding Shaw on a pick and pop on the left wing and the junior buried the wing three for the game-winner.
 
The Stars, paced by Smith's game-high 22 points, shot just under 48-percent from the field, going 27-for-57 as a team, including 10-for-24 from three.  Smith led four in double-figure scoring for the Stars with Anderson adding 17 points in 19 minutes and Redfield and Guest finishing with 16 and 12 respectively.
 
Eugene paced the Regents with 20 points in 21 minutes off the bench. As a team, Rockford scored 65 bench points with Brandon Emerick and Shaw both coming off the bench to score 12 and 11 respectively.
 
The Stars will be back in action on Wednesday, hosting the Illinois Tech Scarlet Hawks for a 7:00 p.m. tipoff at the Igini Sports Forum.