ELSAH, Illinois - The Prairie Fire men's basketball team dropped a non-conference game at Principia 84-83 on Tuesday night.

Knox and the Panthers played close the first few minutes of the game, but the Prairie Fire began pulling away about five minutes into the game and built up a double-digit lead with 5:47 left in the first half. Knox took a 46-32 lead into halftime.

The Prairie Fire scored the first six points of the second half to take a 20-point lead. Knox still led 61-41 with 14:13 to play, but Principia began chipping away at the lead. By the 11:05 mark, the Panthers had worked back to just a single-digit deficit.

The Prairie Fire led 76-66 with 5:39 remaining in the game, but Principia used a 15-6 run to pull within one with 35 seconds left. The Panthers fouled with 14 seconds left and Knox hit just one of the two free throws to take an 83-81 lead. Principia hit a three-pointer with under 10 seconds to secure the victory.

Jordan Rayner led Knox with 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting. Sean Gallery racked up 22 points by hitting 12 free throws and shooting 5-of-9 from the field. Isaiah Lockett added 18 points and Matt Garife poured in 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting. Cade Windham grabbed 12 rebounds.

"It's obviously really frustrating to have a lead for the second game in a row and lose on a last second shot," said head coach Ben Davis. "We executed really well in the first half to build a lead, but didn't do that down the stretch. You have to give Principia credit, they have a 5-1 record for a reason and they stayed poised when they were down and continued to execute. Tough to lose the way we did, but we also did some things really well in stretches that we can build off of."

Knox returns to action on November 25 as they travel to Central College.