PEMBROKE — The University of North Carolina at Pembroke men’s basketball head coach Drew Richards was clear earlier this week that his team’s undefeated start came in spite of its offensive struggles, and that they had some things to figure out on that end of the floor before the meat of conference play.

In Wednesday’s Conference Carolinas opener at home against Francis Marion, those offensive struggles and an uncharacteristically substandard defensive performance proved to be a bad combination as the Patriots won 89-76 to hand the Braves their first loss of the season.

“We can talk about offense, and shooting 28% (in the second half); we still shot 43% (for the game),” UNCP coach Drew Richards said. “We did enough offensively, to me, to win the game, but the problem is it started to come into our defense and rebounding. As soon as that happens, as soon as you lose your edge there, I don’t care what you do offensively, it’s not going to lead to many wins.”

UNCP (7-1, 0-1 CC) made just nine of its 32 second-half shot attempts, and was 2-for-14 (14.3%) from 3-point range in the final 20 minutes. Francis Marion (4-3, 2-0 CC) outscored the Braves 47-31 after halftime.

The Braves led 45-42 at halftime before the Patriots scored the first nine points of the second half, including Tionne Rollins scoring consecutively for the team’s first two baskets in the span, for a 51-45 lead; Francis Marion extended the run to 16-2 over the first 5:33 of the half to take a 58-47 lead. The Braves closed to within five, at 58-53, before a 3-pointer by the Patriots’ Bryce Beamer, establishing a theme that prevailed over most of the rest of the game of the Braves being unable to sustain a run to get much closer.

The Patriots’ lead stayed around eight to 12 points over the next few minutes before Alex Cox and Rollins each hit 3s to take an 80-62 lead with 3:46 to go. UNCP twice got back to within a 10-point margin, but the damage had been done.

The final rebounding margin was even, with 35 for each team, and Francis Marion had outrebounded the Braves until the final moments of the game, a rarity in a UNCP program which is perennially among the best-rebounding teams anywhere.

“Francis (Marion) outplayed us, outworked us, outhustled us,” Richards said. “If anything will come out of this, they’ll understand that’s unacceptable in this program, and I think that message will be sent.”

JaJuan Carr scored a career-high 20 points to lead UNCP, with three assists. Elijah Cobb had 10 points with six rebounds, Javonte Waverly had 10 points and four steals, Bradlee Haskell had eight points, six rebounds and five steals, and Amare Miller had eight points for the Braves.

Francis Marion had five double-figure scorers, led by Jonah Pierce with 18 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks. Cox scored 17 points with eight rebounds, Rollis had 16 points, five rebounds, four assists and three steals, Beamer scored 15 points, and Doug Alves had 10 points and four assists.

The first half was filled with momentum swings back and forth. UNCP led 13-6 early before Francis Marion outscored the Braves 24-8 over the next seven-plus minutes to take a 30-21 lead. UNCP answered with a 16-2 run, with six points from Carr in the stretch, to take a 37-32 lead; the Patriots tied the game at 39-39, and again at 41-41, before UNCP scored three of the last four points in the half to take their three-point advantage into intermission.

“We’ve just got to clean some stuff up that we’ve let linger around all season, bad habits, bad communication,” Carr said. “All season, we’ve always had a bad start, and that’s kind of risky when you play great teams.”

UNCP hosts Emmanuel Saturday in a matchup of the teams picked to finish first and second in Conference Carolinas; tipoff is scheduled for 4 p.m.

The Braves also lost a late-November conference game for their first loss of the season last year before a 16-game winning streak en route to the regular-season conference championship. Asked postgame if Wednesday’s loss could have a similar effect on the Braves, Richards said it’s “up to that locker room.”

“I don’t see a lot of leadership right now, from freshman to seniors, so we’ve got to figure out who our leaders are,” Richards said. “True leadership isn’t when things are going well, true leadership is when things get tough.”