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LAIE, HI - The University at Buffalo battled one of the nation's winningest programs basket for basket before losing to defending NIT champion Tulsa, 80-75, in the first round of the Yahoo! Invitational on the campus of BYU-Hawaii.

The Bulls (5-3), who saw a three-game winning streak end, trailed by seven points with 4:43 remaining but had two three point attempts in the final :30 glance off the rim that might have provided the winning points against the Golden Hurricanes. Tulsa is now 7-1 on the season and has been earning Top 25 votes in the Associated Press poll. Tulsa won 58 games in the previous two seasons, a figure topped only by the last two NCAA champions, Duke and Michigan State.

Louis Campbell

After the longest scoreless period of the game, Buffalo's Louis Campbell (Rahway, NJ/Rahway) hit a three-pointer to cut the lead to 74-70 with 1:50 remaining. After Tulsa hit a pair of free throws to lead 76-73, Campbell set up senior Darcel Williams (Buffalo, NY/Traditional) for a trifecta that cut the lead to 76-73 with 1:08 remaining.

After forcing a Tulsa miss, Campbell then hit a driving layup to make it 76-75 with :27 left. The Bulls than forced a five second violation on the inbounds giving them a chance for the lead. Senior Gabe Cagwin (Seattle, WA/Belfair) had a great look at a three from the corner that rimmed out. After a pair of free throws by Tulsa's Greg Harrington, Campbell had UB's last chance but left a three-point attempt short and the Golden Hurricanes hit two more free throws to clinch it with :05 left.

UB battled Tulsa - which has won 25 or more games for five straight seasons - evenly throughout as UT's biggest lead was nine points. However, the Bulls were hurt severely by 20 turnovers, many which led directly to Tulsa points.

"I felt before the game that if we played our best game and lost than we just have to live with it," said UB head coach Reggie Witherspoon. "I don't think we played our best game and we still had a great opportunity to win at the end.

"I thought our guys did a good job of executing in the last minute or two especially because we had a lack of timeouts," said Witherspoon. "We had a pretty good look at the basket - and we're not going to make every shot -but we certainly made a lot of them. We missed that one and so we go on."

The Bulls did shoot the ball well throughout the game, led again by the blistering shooting of Darcel Williams. Williams finished with 24 points on 10-of-12 shooting and added seven rebounds. Campbell added 13 points and five assists while Robert Brown (Oak Park, MI/Oak Park) netted 13 points. Freshman Turner Battle (Kernersville, NC/East Forsythe) had a career-high nine assists. The Bulls shot 54% for the game and outrebounded Tulsa, 29-27.

The Bulls had two key stretches of turnovers that may have cost them the game. Tied at 29-29, Tulsa finished the half with an 11-2 run to head at intermission, 40-31. After Buffalo pulled to within, 65-64, with under seven minutes to

Daniel Gilbert

go, Tulsa went on a 6-0 run fueled by two UB turnovers, to lead 71-64. UB freshman Daniel Gilbert (Detroit, MI/Cass Technical) helped keep UB in the game in the second half with three key trifectas en route to a career-high 11 points.

"I think the biggest problem was we had stretches - at the end of the first half, and a two minute stretch in the second half - where we turned the basketball over and it led to them getting easy baskets," said Witherspoon. "That took us out a little bit and we had to fight a little bit more of an uphill battle than we would have liked to."

The fact Buffalo even had a chance to win was impressive as not only did Tulsa shoot 48.3% from the field but also was a perfect 16-of-16 from the line. The Bulls will play the loser of the Navy versus Montana game on Friday at 6:00 pm EST.