The Baker men’s basketball team battled with the University of St. Mary from the tip-off.

Going into halftime down 31-34, the Wildcats were unable to pull out a season opener victory Tuesday in Collins Center, losing 77-79.

Junior transfer Brock Entner made his Baker debut by dropping 19 points and went five for six from behind the newly established men’s three-point arc. Senior Nick Iversen also made it into double digits, finishing with 11 points and three assists, while senior Heath Baird led the team with 21 points and went 10 for 11 from the charity stripe.

“We have a lot of talent at the guard spots,” Iversen said. “We are going to be a really good shooting team again.”

The Wildcats returned only one starter from last year, Baird, and added many new faces to the roster. The team lost Mike Mokeski, a big man inside and senior transfer in the preseason due to a knee injury.

Without Mokeski, Iversen said the team will be short-handed inside and will have to focus on the guards doing more rebounding.

After only being down three points at the half, the Wildcats came back to out score the Spires in the second half. Head coach Rick Weaver said the turnovers were a key factor in the loss.

“We had too many turnovers, but I thought we played hard,” Weaver said. “We made too many mistakes in a close game.”

The Wildcats finished the game with 23 turnovers to the Spires 12. Baird said the turnovers were mostly in the first half, but if everyone cuts down on turnovers, they should be a more threatening team.

“We got a little sloppy with the ball in the first half, and we had some careless turnovers,” Baird said. “For the most part we played pretty good team defense, but we went in spurts where we got complacent and let them get easy baskets. We started to fix that in the second half.”

Two Spires players were tough for the Wildcats to contain, Iversen said. Senior Carvelle Taylor dropped 30 points on the Wildcats, while senior Mike Sylvara added 24.  Baird said the team will focus on containing those two players in a rematch at 7 p.m. Monday when the team travels to Leavenworth.

“It was a tough, hard-fought game for a season opener, but it was a game that helped show the thing that we need to correct,” Weaver said. “They’ll be tough on their home court, but we’re looking forward to the challenge.”

The Wildcats will return home to face Ottawa University Nov. 20 at Collins Center.