In the midst of a season-high, six-game losing streak, the Grand Valley State University women’s basketball team trailed by 16 points with just over 6 minutes to play in its contest against Lake Erie College. Despite the steep deficit, the Lakers put together a 22-to-5 scoring run to tie the game at 73 with six seconds remaining.

Six seconds, however, proved to be enough time for Lake Erie guard Cate Cianchetti to nail a mid-range, buzzer-beating jumper, giving the Storm (16-6, 10-5 GLIAC) a 75-73 victory. In a season where GVSU (9-14, 6-10 GLIAC) has thrived on its defense, the Lakers could not get a defensive stop to force the contest into overtime.

“In the last two games, what we’ve lost track of is our defense,” said GVSU head coach Janel Burgess. “We’ve given up 75 and 81 points in the last two games on our home court and we’re letting teams shoot well over 40 percent, which is going to be really tough.”

Dramatic ending aside, the Lakers offense was rolling for arguably the first time this season.

“The lid finally came off the basket for us,” Burgess said. “We shot 54 percent, had 21 assists. If you even look at that 54 percent, I think we’re going to kick ourselves in the tail for the opening of the second half, where we missed numerous layups.”

GVSU built a nine-point lead after sinking six triples in the opening 20 minutes of the contest.

“In our past few games we’ve been missing our shots,” said senior forward Kara Crawford, who established a career high after nailing four 3-pointers. “So in practice we’ve been really focusing on having confidence and putting the ball in.”

For the first time this season, freshman center Daina Grazulis was on the floor for 20-plus minutes and she made her presence known.

“(Lake Erie) wasn’t really playing good low post defense for the most part,” said Grazulis, who established career highs with 18 points, six rebounds and five blocks. “So we just wanted to attack the inside and it was working for us.”

However, the Storm held GVSU’s offense in check for the first 13 minutes of the second half.

“There was a 13-minute stretch where we didn’t attack and we didn’t have fight,” Crawford said. “Fortunately, the last six minutes we were able to have that fight, so I think we proved to a lot of people that even though we have a lot of injuries, we still have that fighting mentality. We just need to carry that forward for the 13 minutes where we didn’t attack.”

On Thursday, GVSU could not hang with No. 5-ranked Ashland University in an 81-58 loss.

The Lakers struggled to slow down the Eagles (22-1, 16-0 GLIAC) offensive attack, allowing them to go on 14-5 and 10-0 scoring runs throughout the game.

For Burgess, the Lakers inability to contain Ashland’s offense and come up with key defensive stops played a factor in the loss. Junior Briauna Taylor led the team with 20 points and four assists against the Eagles.

GVSU will travel to the University of Findlay on Thursday for a 6 p.m. tilt.