Northern Michigan University’s Carson Wonders patiently waits to shoot a short jumper in the second half as Purdue’s Ronald Karenzi goes for a block. (Photo courtesy of Daryl T. Jarvinen)

MARQUETTE — Heading into Thursday’s game against a struggling Purdue University Northwest squad, the Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team had a great chance to win its GLIAC home opener.

However, the Wildcats probably didn’t think it would be as easy as it was as they made quick work of the Pride. NMU opened the game on an 11-0 run and didn’t look back, rolling to a 108-69 blowout victory. The 108 points are the most the Wildcats (7-1, 2-1 GLIAC) have scored in a game against a Division II opponent since they beat Wayne State 108-97 in the 1993-94 season.

“I think we have too many good ball-handlers to have them pressure too much,” NMU head coach Bill Sall said. “I felt like if they were going to kind of play in that style, we were going to be able to have a good night. We also made a lot of shots. That’s the one thing that’s always nice when you can combine that. When you start doing that, it makes it really difficult. I think we were really hard to guard.

“I was pretty happy with how we defended for the most part in the first half. We played with pretty good intent. Offensive rebounding has been a little bit of our Achilles heel and I think they had two or three offensive rebounds in the first half, so that was a really good number too. Overall, I’m happy with how we played.”

Naba Echols led Northern with 20 points, while Isaiah Johnson had 17 points and Myles Howard and Sam Taylor both had 12 points. Howard’s 12 points tied his career-high and he had a team-high nine rebounds.

When asked about his performance, Howard said it enjoyed bringing the crowd to its feet with his thunderous dunks.

“It means a lot because my teammates have a lot of confidence in me to score,” he said. “A lot of them came on dunks tonight and I think that got the crowd energized and our team energized. It was a lot of fun playing out there and I was able to do my job and score tonight.”

NMU’s opening run was highlighted by a 3-pointer from Echols and the Wildcats kept rolling from there. Taylor knocked down a trey to put Northern up 24-9 with 10:40 left in the first half and that was followed by a triple from Marcus Matelski.

Taylor and Echols both hit 3-pointers to help push Northern’s advantage to 40-16 and a rim-rattling alley-oop dunk from Echols to Howard with 5:42 remaining was the big statement of the half for the Wildcats. NMU led 63-26 at the half and held Purdue NW to just 25 percent from beyond the arc.

It was more of the same in the second half for Northern. With 14:45 left, NMU led by 30 points at 71-41. Taylor said that it was important for the Wildcats to keep pushing hard as they knew the Pride wouldn’t give up.

“We knew that they were going to come out and play hard regardless of the score, so we just tried to come out in the second half with the same energy and intensity and keep playing through it all,” Taylor said.

“We feel good, but this is just the beginning,” he added. “We’ve got to keep getting better.”

Shortly after that, the Wildcats’ bench players started to get some minutes on the court. Iron Mountain alum Carson Wonders knocked down his first 3-pointer as a Wildcat with less than 11 minutes remaining to put Northern up 78-47. Later on in the half, North Central alum Marcus Krachinski hit a triple of his own to extend the Wildcats’ lead to 96-52 and NMU kept cruising from there. Both Wonders and Krachinski finished with six points.

Northern ended up shooting 65.1 percent from the field and 50 percent from 3-point land.

­NMU hosts Wisconsin-Parkside at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252.