According to the coaches of Haskell Indian Nation University’s women and men’s basketball squads, Tuesday night’s performances were an aberration.

Two squads that normally feature high-percentage shooters were anything but in their back-to-back losses at the Coffin Complex. The HINU women lost, 65-52, to Bacone College, while the men fell to Ottawa, 72-58.

“We’ve been shooting for over 50 percent the first two games, so I think tonight’s more of a fluke than anything,” said HINU men’s coach Jamie Morrison after his squad shot 34 percent from the field and 18 percent from three-point range. “We missed a lot of open looks early on, which kind of put us in a hole initially. I think if we would have made some of those earlier ones it would have taken a lot of pressure off of us.”

Kirk Brown was one of the few players who didn’t seem to be feeling any pressure, finishing 9-of-17 for a game-high 22 points.

“The main thing we have is shooters and runners – I just take it to the hole and do what I can to get to the line,” Brown said after having made four of his seven free-throw attempts.

But it wasn’t just Haskell (1-2) that couldn’t shoot the ball. Ottawa was also just 43 percent from the field and 17 percent from behind the arc.

Even David Birch, who racked up a team-high 21 points for the Braves, went 0-for-4 from three-point land.

However, the key to Ottawa’s success against the Haskell men was its dominance down low.

HINU was outrebounded, 47-32, and was limited to just seven offensive rebounds as Ottawa came away with 34 rebounds on defense to prevent any second-chance shots.

“They’ve really hurt us with that in the past,” Ottawa coach Andy Carrier said. “Their energy in getting to the offensive glass was actually something we talked a lot about. … It’s hard when you’re just getting one shot at it, and sometimes you tighten up as a shooter.”

Rebounding wasn’t that much of a factor for the Haskell women. The Fightin’ Indians had just eight fewer rebounds than Bacone.

It was simply that HINU (1-1) couldn’t get a shot to drop.

That, in turn, led to an abundance of attempts from outside the arc, where Haskell connected on just two of 26 attempts.

“That’s why we lost right there,” women’s coach Phil Homeratha said. “That’s going to tell me that we probably need to quit shooting threes. And that was the game. But coming in … my post players are like 5-10 and 5-11, and I felt we had to change offensively, and now I’m going to have to rethink it all.”

After going into the half with a two-point lead, it took the Fightin’ Indians three minutes to score their first points of the second half on a drive by Kortney Smith – who also drew a foul and made her free-throw attempt.

It was another nine minutes and a double-digit deficit later before HINU scored again.

“What hurt us was they pulled off that press,” said Smith, who tied with newcomer Melissa Haag with a team-high 10 points. “We’re good at press-breaking. Once they press us, we’re good at getting that ball down court.

“But they pulled off and put us in a half-court set, and we don’t have very big people to get in there and pound it inside.”