With Thursday’s 76-70 loss to the Utah Tech Trailblazers, the Wildcats have now lost their fourth straight game, dropping their season record to 10-10 and 2-5 in Western Athletic Conference games.

The Wildcats’ leading scorer was Yaniel Rivera, junior guard from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, with 18 points, including four 3-pointers.

ACU now sits seventh in the WAC standings, just one spot above Tarleton State, which the Wildcats were supposed to face on Saturday before the game was moved to Feb. 16 due to inclement weather.

Because of the postponement, ACU last played on Jan. 17, meaning the Wildcats had 12 days off between games.

Head coach Brette Tanner attributed the time off to the team’s slow start after the Trailblazers opened the game on an 8-4 run.

Despite ACU going on multiple scoring runs throughout the game, including its largest of the night, a 9-0 run in the second half to make it a four-point game at 54-50 with 8:15 left, the Trailblazers answered with an 11-3 run of their own to shut the door on ACU with 2:59 left.

“I mean, we’d get right there, and then we’d make a mental error,” Tanner said. “We can’t do that. That’s where we’ve got to be tougher.”

One “mental error” happened during a crucial moment of the game, when Rich Smith, senior guard from the Bronx, New York, received a technical foul during the Utah Tech 11-3 scoring run in the second half. Smith was scoreless until the final three minutes of the game, when he scored six points.

Even though ACU has now lost four games in a row, it is not unfamiliar territory for Tanner’s team. It has been a common theme for his teams over the past two seasons. In both, ACU suffered multiple losing streaks during conference play. In those two seasons, the Wildcats ended with winning streaks.

“Of course, we can make a run, but we don’t want to put ourselves in that position,” Tanner said. “We have enough basketball left that we don’t have to make some amazing run. We’ve just got to play better basketball.”

ACU currently has 11 games left on its schedule.

The Wildcats’ next game will be Saturday against the Southern Utah Thunderbirds. The teams last met Jan. 17, when Southern Utah beat ACU 74-52 in Utah.