By Budd Bailey
The situation looked rather bleak for the University at Buffalo men’s basketball team on Tuesday night. The Bulls were trailing, 67-64, to Central Michigan with about two minutes left. UB had trailed for most of the game, and it seemed like Buffalo was headed to its seventh loss in eight Mid-American Conference game.
Suddenly, everything changed.
Ryan Sabol hit a three-point shot to tie the game for the Bulls, and was fouled for good measure. Sabol missed the free throw, but Anquan Boldin Jr. grabbed the rebound and scored on the follow. Out of nowhere, UB had a 69-67 lead. Can you say “turning point?”
There was no stopping Buffalo at that point. The Bulls finished the game with a nice 11-2 run, and grabbed a 75-69 win over the Chippewas before 1,211 in Alumni Arena.
All wins are sweet, especially with a 7-13 record, but this one tasted a little better.
“The win you’re in as the best win of the season,” coach George Halcovage said. “But we had some breakthroughs tonight. … Our guys stayed together. They had great attitudes. Our biggest lead was the final score. We have to love it and embrace it when it’s ugly. Tonight we did that.”
The outcome was unexpected, simply because of how the game went. The teams started off fairly close, but every so often Central Michigan put on a little burst to build its lead. Before anyone realized it, the Chippewas had a 31-18 lead.
The problem was that UB couldn’t get out of its own way, committing several unforced errors in piling up 14 turnovers in the first half. The good news of that was UB simply needed a little clean-up work in order to be more competitive.
“We want to play with pace, and sometimes we get a little too aggressive with the ball in our hands as opposed to making the simple play,” Halcovage said. “We’re going to keep getting better at that. We’ll watch the films. Those situations got us at Eastern Michigan when we had the lead, and we did have some empty possessions. That’s the one thing we have left (to fix).”
Still, CMU had a 34-24 lead with about 45 seconds left in the half. Sabol struck for a three-pointer, and Kavon Bradford hit a long-distance circus shot at the buzzer (his only basket of the game). In a blink, the lead was down to a very manageable 34-30 margin after 20 minutes.
From there, the game stayed closed throughout the second half. Down the stretch, the Bulls got a little help from a Central Michigan team that couldn’t buy a free throw. It went 2 for 11 from the line in the final 7:15, including the final five attempts of the game. In other words, the Chippewas were letting UB hang around. That proved fatal via Buffalo’s closing rush.
“We got chances because of that,” Halcovage said. “We also missed foul shots. I think it was a back-and-forth situation. Then our guys didn’t panic down the stretch. We just didn’t throw the ball up. It’s a team that has figured things out together and grown a lot this year. We’re learning things a little bit through experience.”
“Coach said to keep getting stops and playing hard,” Boldin said. “We had to negate all the mistakes we had earlier.”
Sabol continues to show that he can be a consistent scorer in MAC play, which is a very helpful bit of news. He finished with 24 points on Tuesday, including a 6-for-12 performance on three-pointers. It’s given him and his team a shot of confidence.
“I’m playing confident, but I give the credit to my coaches and teammates,” Sabol said. “My coaches do a great job every day of giving me confidence, and my teammates give me the ball and set me up.”
Tyson Dunn and Ben Michaels had 12 points each, while Boldin had nine points and six rebounds – with two of the latter becoming putback baskets in the final two minutes.
Anthony Pritchard led CMU with 16 points, but he’s probably still thinking about going 0 for 4 from the line at crunch time.
UB goes back to work on Saturday with a 5 p.m. game with Ball State at Alumni Arena. The women’s team will make it a double-header by playing Northern Illinois at 2 p.m. at the same venue.
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
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