In a season as long as the USF men's basketball plays, there will be games to lament. Sunday's 109-106 double overtime home-court loss to UAB was one of them.
The Bulls led by 11 points with 5:08 left in regulation before a crowd at the Yuengling Center that sounded a lot louder than the announced attendance of 3,397. Gotta put the Blazers away, right?
Head coach Bryan Hodgson would agree with you.
USF couldn't do it, though.
The Blazers got it to overtime, when a last second shot by USF's Gavin Hightower for the win wouldn't fall.
Double overtime.
Surely, the Bulls would win it here, right?
Nope.
As the cliche goes, UAB made the big plays the Bulls couldn't. It ruined the American Conference debut for head coach Bryan Hodgson and dropped USF to 8-6 on the season. It was the Bulls' first loss this season at the Yuengling Center.
And it wasted a 36-point outing by guard Wes Enis, who stepped up on a day where the Blazers were dedicated to stopping Joseph Piniion, the Bulls' leading scorer coming into the game. He was blanketed, usually by two defenders, most of the day. He got off only one shot in the first half and didn't score until early in the second half.
He finished with eight points.
Foul trouble plagued the Bulls, too -- as well as UAB. In a battle of attrition, USF sparkplug CJ Brown and Josh Omojafo fouled out.
"They (UAB) had guys foul out as well. So that's that's by no means an excuse,," Hodgson said. "But where I'm going with that is we've got to have guys on our bench that we can trust to step up and really fill in those spots.
"Unfortunately, we had a couple guys that didn't have a great week of practice, weren't very locked in, couldn't go to them. And, you know, we had two freshmen out there down the stretch. And we had five turnovers."
Hodgson didn't mince words about his team's performance in the clutch.
"Every possession was just a one-and-one (foul situation) for them. That's just us. That's extremely soft to let guys score the basket (and) draw the foul," he said.
"I think our bigs didn't do a very good job of sprinting back and showing a presence at the tim. Our guards didn't do a very good job of containing the basketball. We just allowedf them to get to the rim time and time again for a team that doesn't shoot the ball that well. We know they're going to attack the rim. They're No. 1 in the country on rimshot percentage."
The Bulls will try to regroup Wednesday at North Texas.