When Turner Battle nailed a three-point shot with less than one second to play Wednesday night, tying rival Kent State, it looked like last-second heroics would save the Bulls again.
But the Golden Flashes outplayed the Bulls in overtime, handing UB their first loss in a close game this season, 85-80 at Kent's Memorial Athletic Center.
The loss dropped Buffalo (10-5, 3-4 Mid-American Conference) below the .500 mark in conference play.
Undisciplined play hurt the Bulls all night. UB was called for 29 fouls in Wednesday night's game, nearly twice as many as Kent State (12-6, 4-3 MAC).
"It's unfortunate for us, it's unfortunate for the conference, it really is sad," said Bulls' head coach Reggie Witherspoon. "We didn't have a lot of margin for error, and we made too many mistakes to come out with a win."
Both teams played hard but neither could open a big lead. Like so many Bulls games this season, forty minutes of play came down to a last-second shot.
With just seconds remaining, the Bulls had the ball, down by three. Turner Battle took the inbound pass, dribbled to the top of the key, and drained three of his season-high 25 points to send the game into overtime with just 0.6 seconds left on the clock.
"Well, he's always a primary option and has been very good in those situations, we had Calvin (Cage) on one perimeter, and we had Roderick (Middleton) on another perimeter, we had Yassin (Idbihi) drawn up on the outside too, thinking they might forget about him," said Witherspoon. "Turner did a great job, he had guys hanging all over him."
But the Bulls were unable to sustain their momentum in overtime, when they allowed too many second chances to the Golden Flashes.
The Bulls gave up four crucial second-chance points to Kent State, and the Golden Flashes were able to eat up the clock at an alarming rate once they had the lead in overtime.
"We came up and had three guys who could get a pretty good block out, then somebody would come free, and there were bodies lying all over the place," said Witherspoon. "In the end, we didn't come up with the basketball in enough of those situations, and with our small margin of error, when that happens, you can't give them second chances."
Buffalo had to make a concerted effort to win the rebounding battle in order to have a chance to win this game. While the teams were tied in overall rebounds, Kent State grabbed 15 offensive boards to six for UB.
Turner Battle led all scorers at 25 points with Cage, Idbihi and Jordan joining him in double figures for the Bulls.
Cage scored 14 points, including 4-9 from the land of plenty. The Bulls, who have been improving their shot selection lately, were 8-21 from beyond the arc, including a 0-2 performance in the extra frame. Overall, UB converted on 51.8 percent of its field goal attempts, including a red-hot 63.6-percent performance in the second half. The Bulls were able to convert on 14 of 20 free throws, although their attempts were few and far between.
The Bulls found themselves in foul trouble right from the start of the game, with Jordan, Idbihi and Mark Bortz all collecting two fouls apiece by the nine-minute mark in the first half. The Golden Flashes had only one foul at that point in the game.
Jordan and Idbihi had fouled out by the end of the game while Battle, Middleton and Bortz finished with four fouls each.
Buffalo is not in action this weekend, but will return to action next Tuesday when they begin a two-game home stand against the Northern Illinois Huskies (6-9, 2-5 MAC), followed by competition verses the Marshall Thundering Herd (3-12, 0-6 MAC) next Thursday.
