Sports
MEN'S BASKETBALL: UB beats Army for first home win
AMHERST — While the eyes of Western New York were focused on the Bills and Sabres Thursday night, the University at Buffalo men’s basketball team accomplished a historic milestone.
Rodney Pierce and Sean Smiley led the Bulls with 14 points and senior guard John Boyer made clutch free throws down the stretch as the Bulls held off Army 74-67 for the 1,000th victory in the basketball program’s history.
The win upped the Bulls to 3-2 while the Black Knights — winners of five straight coming in — fell to 5-2.
“I told the guys, ‘This is a very good team we are playing.’ They are experienced and they play hard,” UB coach Reggie Witherspoon said after the game. “This might be the best team we played. At times, we were good, but we need to solve some things too.”
One element the Bulls will definitely be working on in future practices is taking care of the ball. They were often careless in finishing with 22 turnovers.
“There is not much to say about that ... we have to clean that up,” Witherspoon said. “Sometimes we get anxious, turn the ball over and take bad shots.”
UB looked like it was in good shape at the half, leading 40-30. But the Bulls came out and were ragged in the second half — and were not able to hit their shots. The Bulls shot an atrocious 6-of-21 (28.6 percent) from the floor in the second half, which allowed the Black Knights to climb back into contention.
“It definitely wasn’t the offense we were running, but I would say we didn’t have the same type of flow in our offense that we did in the first half,” Boyer said of the second half swoon. “We weren’t flowing into our stuff. We were walking up the court, and when we do that, we struggle sometimes.”
The serious trouble for the Bulls started a little past the halfway point of the second half. They led 58-53 when Army’s Marcus Nelson hit a jumper which sliced UB’s lead to 58-55 with 6:02 remaining.
The Bulls really started to sweat with 4:25 left when Army’s Julian Simmons — who finished with a game-high 30 points — sank a 15-foot jumper that cut the deficit to 58-57.
Smiley then gave the Bulls some breathing room with a pair of free throws which gave them a 60-57 advantage before he sank a 3-pointer for a 63-57 lead with 3:33 to go.
From there, Army went into the foul mode, and Boyer made them pay — he sank six of his seven free throw attempts in the final minutes.
Notes: The Bulls are next in action at fourth-ranked Purdue Saturday at 5 pm, and then play at Niagara on December 9 at 7 pm ... Thursday’s meeting was the first between the schools since Army defeated the Bulls 74-53 on February 11, 1978. Current Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was the coach of the Black Knights back then.
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