With his team down 12-1 early in the first half, Rhode Island Head Coach Jim Baron - formerly a head coach with St. Bonaventure for nine seasons - called timeout and gathered his troops for an emotional, rather livid, conversation. The message? Wake up.
While Baron's team responded by closing the gap, they still never took the lead. They never solved the Buffalo defense. The Bulls came out with a 57-48 victory over their opponents from the Atlantic-10 Conference Saturday before 2,010 fans at Alumni Arena.
The loss was the first of the season for URI (2-1), who were coming off an emotional overtime upset win over Southern California, where a USC basket at the buzzer was first counted then nullified via replay to give the Rams the win. Buffalo upped their mark to 2-2.
The 48 points allowed were the fewest the Bulls have ever surrendered under fourth year Head Coach Reggie Witherspoon. The Rams committed 15 turnovers and had only five assists. URI shot 32.1 percent for the game and were 0-for-13 from 3-point range.
"We had some open shots, you just have to hit them," Baron said. "You have to do that on the road if you want to beat good teams. You also have to hit your free throws. We missed lay-up after lay-up in the first half then they pulled away from us and it seemed that we just couldn't recover."
"I think our guys are starting to realize that we can stop some people," Witherspoon said. "The first night (against Cornell) we couldn't stop anybody and we talked about that in practice. Since then we have taken some pride in our half-court man-to-man defense."
Jason Bird led the Bulls in scoring with a career-high 14 points and was 3-of-6 from 3-point range. He was the only UB player in double figures. Mark Bortz was second on the team with nine points.
"In practice we focused on getting in gaps and getting the perimeter players open shots," Bird said. "Turner Battle did a good job getting in some gaps for me, Daniel Gilbert ... that's about it, open looks and I just knocked a few of them down tonight."
Buffalo had to use their bench with several players finding their way into foul trouble. Battle, who came in as the Bulls' leading scorer, picked up a quick two fouls and finished the game with four. Battle, who played nearly all 40 minutes during games last season, only saw 23 minutes of action and had seven points. Senior Clement Smith fouled out of the game, played only 21 minutes, and had six points.
The win avenged a heartbreaking loss at Rhode Island for the Bulls last season. In that game, URI came out with a 57-55 win after Brain Woodward scored with just two seconds left in the game. The Bulls once led by 13 in that game.
"I especially had flashbacks like when Turner Battle got in foul trouble because we got up 13 last year, Turner Battle fouled out with 13 minutes (left), which is pretty difficult to do, then (tonight) he got in foul trouble again and Clem was in foul trouble. We are a young team but we were extremely young at that point ... last year it was tough for us and we had three seniors playing," Witherspoon said. "It was really a learning experience for our young guys.
"Last year they struggled until about three minutes left to go in the game and then they hit some fade away threes, some really deep threes. We didn't want to let up."
This year the Bulls did not let up. Up by nine, 51-42, with less than three minutes left, Buffalo got a block from Bortz. Then, after URI's Dawan Robinson hit a pair of free throws to cut the lead to seven, UB's Davis Lawrence came up with a steal, passed it to Battle, who knocked down a 3-pointer to put the game away.
"They are a good basketball team," Baron said. "They gave us a real hard fight last year where we pulled it out at the end. They are a good team, they have good balance, good depth, and their big guys are very athletic."
The Bulls play their first conference game tonight at Bowling Green. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. The game can be heard on WWKB-AM 1520.
