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LAS VEGAS - After trailing by as many as 18 in the second half, the IUPUI basketball team made a furious second half comeback, only to come up short against Gardner-Webb, 61-54, inside Orleans Arena as part of the Continental Tires Las Vegas Invitational. 

Junior guard Ian Chiles led two Jags in double-digits with 22 points and Mitch Patton finished with 12 points, eight boards and two steals. Naji Hibbert led Gardner-Webb with 15 points and Donta Harper chipped in 14 points in the win. Mike Byron added nine points, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots off the GWU bench. 

Gardner-Webb used an 11-0 run to turn an 11-10 deficit into a 21-11 advantage midway through the first half and never gave the Jaguars back the lead. IUPUI went nearly eight minutes without scoring until Patton broke the streak on a layup, setup by a Khufu Najee assist. 

"Tough starts can doom anyone," IUPUI Head Coach Todd Howard said. "The effort was there. I judge our effort on second chance points and points off turnovers and we won that 39-26. That's plus-13 against a veteran bunch."

IUPUI (1-6) trailed 37-24 at the break and saw Gardner-Webb (3-4) extend the lead out to 46-28 with 15:34 left on a pair of Harper free throws. 

The Jaguars came back with a 15-2 run, beginning with a Chiles drive and back-to-back Justus Stanback jumpers. On the next trip, senior guard Ja'Rob McCallum scored on a drive in transition, prompting a GWU timeout with 13:26 remaining. The Jaguars got another defensive stand and capped a string of 10 straight points on a pair of Patton makes at the charity stripe. GWU's Tyrell Nelson momentarily stopped the momentum with a jumper, but the Jaguars countered with a Marcellus Barksdale layup off an out of bounds play, before then coming up empty on four straight offensive trips. 

Fortunately, GWU continued to go empty from the floor and a Stanback three with 8:48 left made it a five-point game. Gardner-Webb regained traction and pushed its lead back to 12 before the Jaguars had one last run in them. 

This time, Chiles started with a layup and then followed with a three, making it 57-50 with 2:40 left. After another defensive stop, Patton tipped-in his own miss to make it 57-52 with 2:20 remaining. GWU missed a layup, but the Jaguars came up short on their next possession when Patton had a 15-foot baseline jumper partially blocked. From there, Gardner-Webb made 4-of-5 free throws over the final 40 seconds to stave off the Jaguars. 

IUPUI finished the game shooting a season-low 31.7 percent overall and 4-of-16 (25 percent) from three-point range. The Jaguars were a perfect 10-of-10 from the foul line, but were outscored 11-10 at the stripe. Gardner-Webb was an efficient 45 percent from the field after shooting nearly 52 percent in the first half. The victors hit 4-of-10 from three and 11-of-13 at the foul line. 

"Shooting woes broke us," Howard said. "We executed - we got more open looks today than we've had all year. It's hard to overcome that. 

"You outrebound, outhustle and make every free throw and that's winning basketball. Making shots can dictate flow and our misses and output was costly today."

IUPUI won the glass 37-36 with Barksdale matching Patton's output of eight caroms. The Jaguars outscored the Runnin' Bulldogs 17-13 on second chance points and 22-13 in points off turnovers. 

The Jaguars will continue the four-game Las Vegas Invitational on Friday (Nov. 29), facing the loser of the Chattanooga/Morehead State game at 12:30 p.m. Pacific (3:30 Eastern). IUPUI has never played against Chattanooga and is 2-0 all-time against Morehead State, having swept a home-and-home series in 2001 and 2002. The initial win was a 90-81 victory in Indianapolis on Dec. 18, 2001, followed by a 98-89 victory in Morehead on Dec. 28, 2002.