Getty The Buffalo Bulls will host the Canisius Golden Griffins.
The Buffalo Bulls will host the Canisius Golden Griffins at the Koessler Athletic Center on Saturday.
The game is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. ET. While it won’t be broadcast nationally on television anywhere in the US, you can still watch a live stream of the game on your computer, phone or streaming device via ESPN+, the new digital streaming service from ESPN that has exclusive coverage to dozens of college basketball games–and several other sports–every week.
You can sign up for a free 7-day trial of ESPN+ right here, and you can then watch a live stream of the game on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone, tablet or streaming device via the ESPN app.
If you can’t watch live, all games–including Kansas vs Eastern Michigan–that are streamed on ESPN+ are also available to be watched afterwards on-demand via ESPN.com or the ESPN app.
Buffalo vs Canisius Preview
The Bulls (11-1) were undefeated before a loss to No. 20 Marquette dropped them from No. 14 to No. 21.
Despite early foul trouble for Golden Eagles leading scorer Markus Howard, Marquette erased a 19-10 Bulls advantage and went into halftime with a one-point lead. Marquette then broke away in the second half for a 103-85 victory.
“We built a 10-point lead,” Bulls head coach Nate Oats said after the loss, according to The Buffalo News. “I felt we could have built it higher. They actually hung in. I told our guys after the game, that’s when you gotta bury ’em, when you’ve got the best player on the bench and you’ve got ’em down 10. You can’t get outrebounded by 11 in the first half. You’ve got to make tougher plays.”
Howard scored six points in 11 minutes in the first half. He exploded in the second, finishing with 45 points on 12-of-25 shooting.
“I told them great job,” Oats said of his postgame discussion with his team, per The Buffalo News. “I think there’s only six undefeated teams in the country at this point. … We’ve had a great run here at the beginning of the season. We didn’t look like the 14th-ranked team in the country today. But we played a tough team and Markus Howard went nuts. That was probably the best individual performance I’ve seen a kid put on.”
Howard, a 5’11” junior guard, is fifth in the nation in scoring at 25.1 points per game.
“He scored 45 on Kansas State,” Oats said, per the paper. “They’ve got the No. 2 defensive team in the country. I didn’t think he’d do it on us. I was wrong. He did. … I screwed up on how we guarded Howard a little bit. I should have started trapping him sooner, made him give it up, made somebody else beat us. I screwed some stuff in this game, too. That’s on me.”
Senior guards Jeremy Harris and Dontay Caruthers scored 22 and 20 for the Bulls, respectively.
Canisius opened their season with a victory over Bucknell before losing six straight. They then won a pair before falling to Holy Cross 65-63 at home on December 20.
The Golden Griffins held a 10-point lead with 5:13 remaining.
“I thought we worked so hard to build that lead in the second half, but then we lost our composure and we didn’t play with poise and we let them right back into the game,” Canisius head coach Reggie Witherspoon said, according to GoGriffs.com. “Holy Cross is a solid, well-coached team. They’ve won some good games on the road and they’re not going to just go away. We knew that coming into this game.”
“We didn’t stay locked-in mentally, and as the game got closer, we just didn’t execute.”