John Cooper played the lead role in “Sleepless in Oxford” on Wednesday night.

The Miami University men’s basketball coach did plenty of painful film study after his RedHawks began Mid-American Conference play with a thud, losing to Northern Illinois 72-61 at Millett Hall.

“We didn’t play well. It’s that simple, and it’s why I didn’t get much sleep,” Cooper said toward the end of practice Thursday morning. “It doesn’t feel good. I don’t like it. But that’s part of the game, and hopefully you don’t let that one cost you another one. We’ve got to try to win a game on the road, and we know how hard that is.”

MU (5-8) left for Buffalo on Thursday afternoon and will meet the Bulls at Alumni Arena on Saturday night. UB is 5-10 and took an 86-68 beating at Ohio on Wednesday.

What bothered Cooper the most about Wednesday’s defeat was the lack of fire the majority of his squad showed.

“I thought maybe it was the first game where we just completely did that,” Cooper said. “Certainly we’ve had stretches in games where it’s been that way and we were able to pick it up and find it, but we didn’t have it last night.

“That’s not a coaching thing. That’s something you must bring. If you don’t bring it, now you put the coach in a situation where, ‘OK, if you’re not going to bring it, then we’ve got to figure out who will.’ ”

Asked if any lineup changes were coming Saturday, the first-year coach replied, “I don’t know. I know (Will) Sullivan will be in the lineup.”

Sullivan, a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard, grabbed a career-high eight rebounds against the Huskies and led MU on the boards for the second straight game. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

The RedHawks have outrebounded their opponent only twice (Grambling State and James Madison) this season. They tied Division III Wilmington and came up on the short end against everybody else.

“I think we’re all mentally tough enough to bounce back,” Sullivan said. “Basketball is a sport where you’ve got to have a short memory. Our individual performances, the team performance, none of it was good enough last night. They had a lot of easy looks breaking the press. It was inexcusable, and we’ve got to correct the mistakes.”