FORT COLLINS >> With Mountain West play beginning this weekend, Tuesday’s night’s nonconference finale against Radford was Colorado State’s last chance to fine-tune some things before the grueling league slate starts.

Despite taking a double-digit lead late in the first half, the Rams had to fend off the Highlanders in the second, eventually coming away with a 78-68 victory at Moby Arena.

CSU improved to 6-5, moving above .500 before a road trip to Nevada this weekend.

“Good game tonight against a tough team,” CSU head coach Niko Medved said. “They’re a team that never goes away. We knew they’d battle until the end. When I look at the keys to the game, I thought we nailed a lot of them.”

CSU led by 10 going into the second half, but four turnovers in the first five minutes of the half and a scoring drought of more than three minutes allowed Radford to cut the Rams’ lead to five points, 44-39, with 14:23 left in the game.

The Rams were able to score four straight points to take a nine-point lead at 48-39 with 12:52 remaining, but the Highlanders cut the CSU lead to three at 54-51 with 7:43 left. Nique Clifford ended a 10-4 Radford run with a 3-pointer to make it 57-51.

Radford never got closer than four the rest of the game. CSU took an 11-point lead at 74-63 on a pair of free throws by Kyan Evans with 34 seconds left. Evans made six free throws in the final 34 seconds to secure the victory.

“I don’t think we got rattled,” Medved said. “We had one little stretch, maybe early in the second half where we probably weren’t guarding the way we needed to. Every time we had a chance to separate, we needed a big shot to go down or whatever, we just couldn’t get it and then they’d come down and make one the other way. But our guys stayed with it and I thought we made some huge plays.”

Keshawn Williams and Rashaan Mbemba led the Rams with 16 points each. Evans added 15 and Jalen Lake had 11.

The Rams shot 55.8% from the field for the game. They outrebounded the Highlanders, 35-28 and had 21 assists to 10 turnovers. The most important thing for CSU in the second half, was pushing back when Radford made a couple of runs.

“I feel like we come out slow in the second half,” Williams said. “We’ve done that on multiple occasions. When we went to the locker room at halftime, even though we were up, coach emphasized, ‘Hey, don’t stop playing.’ So we went out there and we upped the intensity.”