HELENA, Mont. -- The Lewis-Clark State College men's basketball team got off to slow starts in both halves and couldn't climb out of the hole in falling to Carroll College 72-53 in a key Frontier Conference contest on Thursday night.

LCSC entered the night in a three-way tie for first place in the conference but fell out of the top spot for the first time this season with the loss, combined with Westminster defeating Rocky Mountain. Westminster leads the conference standings at 10-3, while Rocky Mountain, Carroll and LCSC are all 9-4, and Montana State-Northern is 8-4. 

Westminster plays at Carroll on Saturday to conclude the regular season, while LCSC plays in Billings at 3 p.m. Saturday against Rocky Mountain. In order to share the conference title, LCSC needs to win Saturday's game and have Caroll also win. 

Anywhere from 2-4 teams could share the title if Carroll defeats Westminster, while a Westminster victory would give it the title outright. 

LCSC entered its game against Carroll in control of its own destiny for the top seed in the conference tournament, but now will need help to claim the top spot. If Carroll and LCSC both win on Saturday, LCSC will be the top seed, no matter what MSU-Northern does during the week. All ties are broken by head-to-head competition, and all the top teams split against each other, except for LCSC sweeping Westminster. Because of that sweep, LCSC can still nail down the top spot. Even if Westminster wins, LCSC can claim the No. 2 spot in the conference tournament with a win over Rocky. 

The Warriors, however, will need to get off to a better start on Saturday in order to win. Carroll never trailed in Thursday night's game and opened up an 11-point lead early before the Warriors rallied to cut it to 28-22 at halftime.

Carroll, however, scored the first 10 points on the second half and LCSC never got closer than 12 the rest of the way. Carroll's largest lead was at 22 points, 69-47. 

The Warriors gave up 44 points in the second half to fall to 3-9 in games where they have allowed 68 or more points. 

Senior post Mike Gordy, the conference's co-Player of the Year last season, led the Warriors with 20 points, while Brian Duckworth added 10. 

Senior Derek Johnson led Carroll with 14 points, including six during the 10-0 run to start the second half, while Chad Vaculin added 13. 

The conference tournament will take place March 5-8 in Butte, Mont. The top two seeds will play on Wednesday and will get Thursday off, while seeds 3-6 will play on Thursday and will have to win on three consecutive days in order to claim the tournament title.