The UB women's basketball team did not respond to the alarm clock.
They wanted to keep dreaming about playing in the Mid-American Conference tournament and advancing to the title game, not waking up to face the new season.
The Canisius Golden Griffins (1-0) turned pleasant dreams into a nightmare Friday night by dominating the Buffalo Bulls 79-57 in front of 1,521 fans at Alumni Arena. It is the first home opening loss since the 1999-2000 season for the Bulls (0-1).
Sophomore Becky Zak led the Griffs with a double double, her first, by scoring 18 points with 10 assists. She played a key role early in the contest by notching two field goals along with two assists. Five minutes into the game Canisius had taken the lead 8-7, and would never relinquish it, capitalizing on a 20-3 run in five minutes of play to make it 42-24 at the half.
Buffalo would never recover.
"You look at Beck Zak, who didn't play the first 13 games of last season because of her back and never really had the chance to be a freshman, we made her take responsibility for the team, and she's done a great job," said Griffs head coach Mike Decillis.
Canisius drained every opportunity Buffalo afforded them, shooting 57.6 percent in the first half. Leading the scoring charge for the Griffs was senior guard Jenel Stevens. She dropped 21 points and nine rebounds on the Bulls, along with shooting 3-4 from beyond the arc.
"It feels really good," said Stevens. "It was especially refreshing to have everybody come and play tonight. It was just amazing."
Buffalo meanwhile, could only muster a shooting percentage of 35.4 percent for the game, while going an astonishing 0-12 from three point range.
"I told our kids that were are not a team that can get down offensively, and we never have been," said UB head coach Cheryl Dozier. "I don't really care what we score offensively, I'm furious about how we played defense. We didn't play with any passion, we didn't play with any desire."
"I'll take responsibility for this," Dozier continued. "I didn't feel we were ready to go. I told the girls when we walked out of there, 'I'm going to take this loss, because our kids were definitely not ready to go.'"
Canisius saw the vulnerability of UB early.
It was production from the starters that made the difference in the game. While the Golden Griffins could make the shots when the opportunity was given, Buffalo could not. Senior forward Jessica Kochendorfer scored only 11 points in 33 minutes of play, and sophomore point guard Hollie Cook did not score at all.
"You expect those shots to go down when you're at home," said Dozier. "We need to be able to have confidence in the fact that we are going to be able to knock 'em down. We did not shoot well tonight."
UB will get a chance to right itself at 7 p.m. on the road at Colgate on Tuesday.
