Once you see the forest through the trees, you will appreciate the Toledo basketball team’s 75-63 loss to Ball State on Tuesday was just one no good, very bad night.

But the Rockets are not there yet.

They’re still looking up at the trees.

Toledo watched — and that’s the operative word here — as the bigger, more urgent Cardinals did their thing high and low — but mostly down low.

This was the kind of night Rockets fans feared most, the answer to what happens when you miss everything, somehow can’t rebound anything, and misplace the fun, underdog edge that intrigued this city the past three weeks.

And just the sort of letdown from a rollicking rivalry win their coach perhaps expected.

Tod Kowalczyk ended practice a day earlier by huddling with star swingman Tre’Shaun Fletcher and Nate Navigato, the players this ink-stained schmuck waited to interview. Whatever he told them, the two veterans were nice and helpful as usual, but on message.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Fletcher repeated. “I just want to keep reiterating that.”

Guess he was right.

If Toledo was riding high from its seven-game winning streak, this one brought the home team crashing back to the hardwood.

Befitting a half-empty Savage Arena, the Rockets (15-7, 7-2 MAC) displayed less life than a mausoleum. The best shooting team in the league couldn’t hit the broad side of the ocean — following a 67 percent night against Bowling Green with a 34 percent encore — but games like that happen.

More concerning was their allergy to 50-50 balls and no-show rebounding. They made Ball State’s inside tandem — 6-9 Trey Moses (14 rebounds) and 6-8 Tahjai Teague (11 rebounds) — resemble the Fifth Third Center and old Fiberglas Tower, with the rest of the visitors filling out the city skyline.

“Too easy! That’s too easy!” cried Cardinals guard Taylor Persons as he preened up the court in the first half.

The taunt came after a floater. It could have been about anything. You looked up at halftime, and Ball State had 35 rebounds — one short of their per-game average — including 13 offensive. Toledo, thanks for playing, had 19 and 2, and it got little better.

Sure, Toledo could use a true banging big man, and reserve forward Willie Jackson, its most efficient rebounder, was out with a bum shoulder. But remember, the Rockets had a plus-5.0 rebounding margin in their first eight league games, throwing what we figured would be the undersized team’s fatal flaw in our face. This was all about effort, the big men too often flicked aside and the guards, as Kowalczyk said, refusing “to go in there and battle.”

It was also just what a Toledo team enjoying unanticipated prosperity might have needed.

“I kind of sensed that guys weren’t ready to play,” Fletcher said. “This seven-game win streak was kind of getting blown out of proportion. As much as I don’t want to say it, I think this was kind of good for us to take this one, because now we are going to be ready to get that edge back to where we started.”

The guess here is they will.

It is easy to overreact, but the Rockets — two games up on Ball State and Western Michigan in the MAC West — are just fine. “We had adversity tonight, and we didn’t respond,” Kowalczyk said. “We’ll learn from it and get better.”

And, this time, you believe it. In a sport with one little ball and many big egos, there will be seasons a team has worse chemistry than a puppy and a loafing cat, ready to fold at the first sign of trouble.

That was Toledo last winter. Its two all-league senior stars — Jon Jon Williams and Steve Taylor — existed in their own world, its two junior college transfers flamed out, and a team less than the sum of its parts swan-dived to a 17-17 finish.

Then there are the years the puzzle aligns. That is Toledo today, with Fletcher — the do-everything senior transfer from Colorado — providing a boundless reserve of playmaking and positive energy that lifts everyone around him.

“When you have guys who are very selfless and unselfish and care about the program first and foremost and not individual honors and numbers, you have a chance for good chemistry,” Kowalczyk said before the game. “There aren’t any hidden agendas on this team ... and I think that’s why we’re having success.”

And why chances are that will continue.

Tuesday was just one no good, very bad night.

First Published January 31, 2018, 4:37 a.m.