Senior Durrell Norman went down the list of things the Lumberjacks were missing on Thursday night.

Intensity, heart, passion, pride -- all were lacking, and have been during their recent losing streak.

The 78-53 loss to Montana marked the NAU men's basketball team's fourth straight loss to a Big Sky Conference school and the Jacks (5-12 overall, 1-4 Big Sky) are left searching for answers.

"Coming out here and getting embarrassed is really not acceptable," Norman said.

As with the other three losses, NAU struggled to keep up with a conference opponent and struggled from the get-go as the Grizzlies (11-5, 4-0) took an 18-6 lead in the first 6 1/2 minutes.

"We seem to be going downhill and regressing in the things that we're doing," Norman said. "I know there's a lot of frustration in that locker room, we just have to find a way to turn it around and find something to change the season."

Those crucial first few minutes essentially doomed NAU the rest of the way.

"You have to have effort and take some pride," said freshman James Douglas, who scored 12 points. "We lacked some intensity, we were all quiet and got our heads down early like in the first five minutes and ever since then, we never got back it up."

In Thursday's game, the Jacks couldn't shoot the ball and couldn't defend well, spelling trouble for a team that has been vastly undersized in almost every one of its contests this season.

Although NAU kept its rebounding numbers almost even with Montana, the Griz's 58.9 shooting percentage nearly doubled the Jacks' 30.9 scoring efficiency.

Those troubles certainly affected how the Jacks played throughout the rest of the game.

"It's hard to have great effort when you're not getting your shots down," NAU interim coach Dave Brown said. "We're a team that if we shoot well, I think we play better on both ends."

Montana's superior physical presence and overall athleticism led to plenty of easy buckets while the Jacks witnessed the Griz outscore them 40-18 in the paint.

"They bumped us around," Brown said. "They really didn't do anything that we weren't expecting, but they did it with a physical strength and maturity. Our team is rather young, we get bumped around there on the court and sometimes we don't respond to that very well."

While the Jacks tried to score near the bucket, it typically led to either a turnover or a swarm of Grizzly defenders going after the ball, forcing NAU to kick the ball back outside for, more often than not, a poor shot attempt. The Griz offense, on the other hand, was cutting through the Jacks' defense for easy uncontested layups.

Gabe Rogers led NAU with 13 points on 4 of 16 shooting. Norman had seven points and led the Jacks with seven rebounds while Ephraim Ekanem scored eight and pulled down six boards. Kareem Jamar led Montana with 15 points and seven rebounds while Will Cherry and Mathias Ward scored 12 and 10 points, respectively.

Brown said his squad doesn't have the best attitude at the moment following four deflating losses, but that's a job he has to figure out quickly. Otherwise, NAU may see a repeat performance against Montana State on Saturday.

"If we come out with our heads down, then we're probably going to be trying to adjust attitudes against next week," Brown said.

Jacob May can be reached at jmay@azdailysun.com or 556-2257.