Northern Michigan University’s Abi Fraaza, right, shoots past Michigan Tech defender Janie Tormanen during their GLIAC women’s basketball game held at the Huskies gym in Houghton on Thursday. (Photo courtesy NMU)

HOUGHTON — The Northern Michigan University women’s basketball team couldn’t make a huge third-quarter comeback pay off with a victory on Thursday as Michigan Tech pulled out a 64-59 victory in Houghton.

After the teams were tied 15-15 through one quarter, the Huskies took total control in the second quarter to build a 38-25 lead at halftime.

Then NMU scored the first dozen points of the second half to pull within one, 38-37, with 4:37 left in the third quarter. Northern’s streak was actually 14 points in a row, since the Wildcats’ Abi Fraaza made a layup with one second left in the first half after the visitors had fallen behind by 15.

Barely more than a minute after getting within the single point, Northern tied it 40-40 on an Alyssa Nimz 3-pointer with 3:28 to go in the third.

The Wildcats didn’t slow their momentum after pulling even, working their way to as much as a six-point lead, 46-40, with 1:42 left in the third following a Sarah Newcomer triple.

However, Tech got back within 46-44 by the end of the period, then took the lead for good just 18 seconds into the final quarter when the MTU’s Dani Nuest hit a 3.

While the Huskies were never able to bump their lead up to more than six points, which happened twice after that, Northern could never quite catch them either.

The Wildcats whittled their deficit to a single possession for almost all of the final 5 1/2 minutes, with Tech only able to get a few more points tacked onto that by making 3 of 4 free throws in the game’s final 18 seconds.

NMU (18-7 overall) fell into a three-way tie for second place in the GLIAC as the Wildcats, Wisconsin-Parkside and Ferris State are all 12-5 in the league. Tech locked up a spot in the upcoming eight-team GLIAC Tournament by improving to 8-9 in the conference, 11-14 overall.

While just about every team in the league has three games to play, if the tourney started today, there’s a distinct possibility that MTU would come to Marquette to play Northern, depending on how the second-place tiebreakers play out.

On Thursday, despite coming off the bench, Fraaza led all scorers with 18 points as she made 7 of 10 shots from the field, including a 3-pointer, and 3 of 4 free throws while adding six rebounds and two assists.

Teammate Jacy Weisbrod, the GLIAC’s leading 3-point shooter, added 16 points as she made a trio of treys while adding four rebounds.

Newcomer tacked on nine points and four rebounds as NMU was led in rebounding by Mackenzie Holzwart with eight as she scored seven points and blocked two shots.

Kendall Standfest paced Tech with 15 points and teammate Janie Tormanen added 14 as both shared their team rebounding honors with eight apiece.

Most of the team statistics were quite even — both teams shot exactly 39.3% from the field, Northern slightly better on 3s, 30% to 28%. NMU held a 36-35 rebounding edge as each team made three steals.

Tech had a slight edge with fewer turnovers, 12-9, but the biggest difference may have come at the free throw line — while the Wildcats were just 4 of 6, MTU made 15 of 17.

In a back-and-forth first half, the Huskies led 6-2 before Northern scored six straight points to go up 8-6. Later in the quarter, there were three lead changes and two ties, including 15-15 entering the second period.

After the Wildcats retied it 17-17 on a Weisbrod layup with 9:07 left in the first half, Tech reeled off 12 straight points to open a 29-17 lead with 4:10 to go in the second.

A few minutes later, Northern started its comeback that stretched mostly through the third quarter.

With Thursday’s game starting a four-game road swing to end the regular season, the Wildcats will spend their remaining three games near the confluence of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana at the southern end of Lake Michigan over the next week.

NMU travels to Chicago to face GLIAC newcomer Roosevelt at 6:30 p.m. EST Monday, then backtracks to Racine, Wisconsin, to play Wisconsin-Parkside at 6:30 p.m. EST Thursday, and finishes it off by turning around again to play in the northwestern Indiana city of Hammond against Purdue Northwest at 2 p.m. EST next Saturday.

Story contents based on Northern Michigan University Sports Information press release reviewing the game. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.