kang@journalnet.com

Four Idaho State players swarmed into the paint as Northern Arizona's missed free throw floated to the court with 16 seconds left on the clock.

A split-second later, Lumberjacks point guard Sadé Cunningham - all 5 feet, 4 inches of her - emerged from the tangle of arms and legs with the ball, all but sealing their 66-60 win Thursday at Reed Gym.

"It's just a real aggravating thing," Idaho State coach Seton Sobolewski said. "It's just move your feet, run, jump, grab the ball. You've got to want it. You've got to want it more than they do."

The Bengals weren't quite ready to admit they didn't want to win badly enough, but the final sequences of Thursday's game made that hard to argue. Cunningham's offensive board was the final one of Northern Arizona's eye-popping six in the final 2:17, a pattern that all but killed off Idaho State's second-half comeback.

The Bengals' late-game woes on the glass, the culprit in their first Big Sky loss Jan. 10 against Portland State, also doomed them to their fourth straight defeat.

"That's just a lack of effort," senior point guard Jenna Brown said. "If a team is the one that's coming up with the ball that's bouncing on the floor, it shows they want it more. I think we all want it, but it's just giving that extra effort."

With 2:49 left in the game, Idaho State (5-14, 2-4 Big Sky) trailed 60-58 after having sliced into a double-digit second-half deficit.

On a nightmarish following possession, Northern Arizona (6-13, 3-3) grabbed three offensive boards - one on a dead ball - and finally capped it off with a Janelle Matthews jumper.

The Bengals went one-and-done on their final few possessions but stayed alive when the Lumberjacks missed four of their next seven foul shots. Northern Arizona snatched two of those misses, though, effectively killing the clock. The Lumberjacks held a 16-5 advantage on the offensive glass for the game.

A few of those rebounds surprised the Bengals by ricocheting long off the rim, but they refused to blame funky bounces for their loss.

"You feel like you have position, but it takes everybody crashing at once," senior post Michelle Grohs said. "Sometimes it comes up right in the middle. It's our job to come up with that."

The late meltdown spoiled what was otherwise a fine effort by the Bengals after halftime. They trailed 42-29 after the opening possession of the second half, largely because the Lumberjacks shredded the 2-3 zone defense they were playing extensively for the first time all season.

Sobolewski switched over to man-to-man after that, a move that immediately paid dividends. Idaho State gashed Northern Arizona with a 10-0 run and didn't trail by more than six points the rest of the game.

Despite team-high totals of 16 points from Grohs and junior post Oana Iacovita, the Bengals' offense sputtered for the rest of the game. But their man-to-man scheme had the same effect on the Lumberjacks' offense, and that barren stretch didn't cost them too badly.

"I personally missed some easy shots I should have made," Iacovita said. "There were two or three layups I probably should have made. We had open shots, you know? We just needed to knock them down."

The Bengals surely rued those missed shots, because in the end, they didn't even get to shoot the ball with the Lumberjacks monopolizing it.

Sobolewski promised he wouldn't give up on his efforts to improve Idaho State's rebounding ability, but even he seemed at a loss for what exactly to do, having tried "every rebounding drill in the book."

"I don't know if the way you have to solve this problem is by recruiting," Sobolewski said. "There's no magic rebounding drill that you do and then, all of a sudden, rebound better. You've got to want it, and you've got to go get it."