Nathan Boothe delivered a painful blow to Miami University’s men’s basketball team Wednesday night.

The freshman center buried the first 3-pointer of his career at the buzzer to give host Toledo a thrilling 65-64 victory before a crowd of 3,711 at Savage Arena.

“Certainly a tough way to lose a game,” RedHawks coach John Cooper said after his squad fell to 8-13 overall and 3-6 in the Mid-American Conference East Division. “But I thought our guys were really pretty good and stuck together and competed their tails off.”

Freshman Reggie Johnson paced MU with 16 points and looked to be the hero when he converted a putback off an Allen Roberts miss with 3.3 seconds left.

The Rockets would in-bound the ball three different times from there. They got it across halfcourt and called a timeout with 2.8 showing. Then an errant pass was grabbed by Boothe and Miami’s Quinten Rollins, and Rollins was called for a travel.

Then, with 1.4 on the clock, Matt Smith threw the ball in from the baseline to Boothe, whose trey was perfect.

“I’ve only had one game-winner in the rest of my life, and that was off a free throw,” said Boothe, who was 0 of 4 beyond the arc this season before hitting his only attempt Wednesday. “Nothing compared to this tonight.”

Roberts had 15 points, Geovonie McKnight scored 11 and Will Felder added 10 for MU, which shot 46.8 percent from the field and 83.3 percent from the line. The RedHawks also won the battle of the boards 29-25.

Julius Brown (18), Rian Pearson (16) and Boothe (13) were the top scorers for Toledo (10-10, 6-3 MAC West).

“I’m not going to make any apologies for winning, but we didn’t play well defensively tonight,” UT coach Tod Kowalczyk said. “I thought our perimeter defense was very, very poor. Their guards drove our guards. That was the reason we could never put them away.”