Rivier freshman guard Robenson Baguidy goes up for two against Plymouth State's Christian Barr late in the first half of Tuesday night's game at the Muldoon Center in Nashua. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – There’s a flu bug going through the Rivier University men’s basketball team, and what Raiders coach Lance Bisson and his team saw Tuesday night didn’t make them feel any better at all.

In fact, likely worse.

The Raiders, missing one starter and three key rotation players off the bench for their home opener, were competitive with Plymouth State for about the first five minutes before an eight-minute scoreless drought helped lead to a 77-48 loss before a standing room only crowd at the Muldoon Center.

“I think everybody in the building was stunned,” said Raiders coach Lance Bisson, who before the bug hit had high hopes for a rare win over the Panthers. “But they were also significantly more assertive than we were. They were first to the glass, they were first to the ground, they were first to punch, and we were late to punch back.

“So there were a lot of stunned looks on the sideline. I thought we had at least enough guys that had gone through enough where that wouldn’t be the case.”

But it was, unfortunately for the Raiders, who fell to 1-3 on the young season. The Panthers (3-1) had three players in double figures with Giorgi Tsiklauri (19 points), Kevin Henry (19) and Kyler Bosse (18) leading the way, and shot 47.5 percent from the floor with a lot of high percentage shots. They also outrebounded the Raiders 48-33, and Bisson said earlier that rebounding would be an issue for the Raiders this year.

But one way to counter that is with good shooting and quickness, but Riv had neither, shooting just 25 percent from the floor. In fact, the Raiders had zero players in double figures, with freshman guard Marko Ljushikj their leading scorer with just eight points.

It wasn’t pretty. Riv was up 7-4 when the Panthers became more assertive with a 19-0 run, and the Raiders were lucky to be down just 11 at the half. Then in the second half, another big run to start stretched the lead to 20-plus and it was over.

The Raiders were probably fortunate to go into the halftime break down just 11, 36-25. But that was as close as they’d be.

“What hurt us in the first half, hurt us in the second half,” Bisson said.

Their starter out is arguably Riv’s best player, senior guard Joseph Buford. And their sixth man, Trinity alum Ethan Hutchinson, was also out.

“We went to the bench for the first time and they went on their run,” Bisson said. “We felt the effects of our depth. Our starters were fine, but guys who were bumped up to the rotation – we were without our best player, and our sixth man, seventh man. As soon as it went to that, five minutes into it, that’s when it started to crumble.”

For now, the Raiders will have to survive. Freshman point guard Robenson Baguidy, the prize recruit from Goffstown, had six points with two assists and three steals while veterans Nikolas Pignone and Pharaoh Davis also had just six points apiece.

“We’re going to need people to not be uncomfortable in their new roles in the short term, and they were,” Bisson said. “But you have to tip your hat to (PSU). They’re one of the hardest playing teams we’ll play all year. We saw them in the tournament (at the University of New England) this past weekend, the one we were in, and we knew how assertive they were was going to be as important as execution and all that.”

There’s no rest for the weary, either, as Riv is at Thomas College in Maine on Thursday. They do get a break as a game scheduled with Leley University for Friday was moved to Sunday at noon at the Muldoon.

Bisson said he needs to do a better job of highlighting the Raiders strenghths, first of which is their quickness. But he knew Plymouth’s forwards might be able to match that as well.

“Credit to them,” Bisson said. “They brought the fight to us certainly, and our guys didn’t respond very well.”