TOLEDO, Ohio – Toledo rallied from a 14-point first-half deficit to win its home opener over Cleveland State, 70-61, on Tuesday evening in Savage Arena. The victory evened the Rockets' record at 2-2, while the Vikings fell to 0-1.

"I liked the fact that we were able to grind out this win tonight," Head Coach Tod Kowalczyk said. "We didn't play that well in the first half and missed a lot of open shots. We got back to Rocket Basketball in the second half and started scoring in transition. I never sensed panic and that's a tribute to our senior leadership. Sometimes it takes a while to get going and that was the case tonight."

Junior Setric Millner Jr. paced a balanced Toledo attack with 17 points. Joining Millner in double figures were freshman Ryan Rollins (15 pts.), senior Marreon Jackson (14 pts., team-high five assists) and senior Spencer Littleson (12 pts.). Littleson came up big in the second half, scoring all 12 of his points after intermission. He knocked down a pair of three-pointers in the final four minutes that completed the Rocket comeback.

"Spencer kept shooting and was great in the second half," Kowalczyk. "He hit some really big shots after having some shots go in-and-out earlier in the game."

Junior Jonathan Komagum led the Rockets on the boards with a game-high 11 rebounds.

Freshman Jayson Woodrich paced Cleveland State with 13 points.

The Rockets return to action on Friday, Dec. 4 with a trip to Eastern Michigan (0-1) for their Mid-American Conference opener vs. the Eagles. Tip-off time is set for 7 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN3.

The Central Michigan men's basketball team opened its trip to Florida on Tuesday with a 96-76 loss to Florida International at the Panthers' Ocean Bank Convocation Center.
 
The Chippewas (0-2), who opened the season on Saturday with a 74-72 loss at Illinois-Chicago, are scheduled to play Flagler College on Wednesday (7 p.m.) on the same court. Flagler is a Division II school in St. Augustine, Fla.
 
FIU (3-0) put the Chippewas on their heels with a 12-4 run to close the first half for a 41-30 lead at the break. The Panthers outscored CMU, 25-8, over the first 5 ½ minutes of the second half for a 66-38 margin.
 
CMU never got closer than 19 points the rest of the way.
 
"Proud of our guys," CMU coach Keno Davis said. "A lot of things went against us tonight, and our guys had a chance to kind of lay down in that game when we knew we couldn't come back, but I thought you saw some resiliency."
 
The Panthers made 18 of their 41 3-point attempts (43.9 percent). Five of those triples came during FIU's decisive run early in the second half.
 
"When the threes start going against you, it's tough to recover," Davis said. "There was a 10-, 12-point run that they had where we didn't get a couple calls, they made a couple threes, we hung our head for a little bit and pretty soon it was out of reach. That's a learning process for us and hopefully it's a quick learn at that.
 
"But I like the way we were able to finish the game."
 
Senior guard Travon Broadway Jr., a Miami native, scored a career-high 19 points to lead the Chippewas. Aundre Polk, a 6-foot-10 freshman playing just his second collegiate game, added 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting.
 
Eric Lovett hit six 3-pointers en route to a game-high 20 points, leading five double-figure scorers for FIU.