On a five game win streak and coming off a high from the late game heroics in their previous game on Saturday evening, the Aurora University men's basketball team took to the road to take on the Regents of Rockford University. The road was not kind to the Spartans as they fell to the Regents 86-77.

Early in the first half the Spartans held a 7-4 lead on a three-point field goal from junior Kalmon Stokes. But over the next five minutes, Rockford took off on a 19-3 run to take a 23-10 lead. AU continued to struggle in the half and with 2:45 to play, they found themselves down 21 at 43-22.

The Spartans were able to build some momentum going into halftime though, finishing the half on a 10-2 run to trail by 13 (45-32) going into half. Stokes, Nick Kladis and Brandon Smith each had seven points in the half.

AU came out firing in the second half with an 11-2 run aided by six points from Smith to cut the Rockford lead down to two (47-45) with 17 minutes to play.

With a lay-up from senior Sean Gant at 13:30, AU was again down only two (55-53) and seemed on the verge of taking their first lead since early in the first half. But the Regents shot off a 10-0 run to push the lead back to double-digits (65-53) with 10:51 on the game clock.

The Spartans answered back with another 11-2 run to pull within three at 67-64 with 6:30 to play. But that was the closest the Spartans would get down the stretch before falling by the 86-77 final score.

Smith and Tyler Hall led the Spartans with 20 points each with Hall adding six assists. Kladis had 14 points and Kyle Pilmer had 10 points and nine rebounds.

With the loss, AU is now 15-5 overall and 13-3 in the NACC. Next action for the Spartan men's basketball team comes on Friday, January 30, 2015 when they host Illinois Institute of Technology. Game time is set for 7:00 p.m. in Thornton Gymnasium.