BUFFALO, N.Y. – In Division I, only two schools have athletic programs that go by the "Bulls".
One of them is the University at Buffalo, located 20 minutes away from the Queen City. The other is the University of South Florida, located approximately 20 hours away. Both schools have little in common outside of the moniker.
On Thursday afternoon, fans of the former school – and any other neutral party that attended the game in KeyBank Center – were converted to supporters of the team in green and white.
A few Buffalonians may have been swayed by the shared name, but more likely it was just a coincidence that came with other factors. Bryan Hodgson heading the 11-seed's bench certainly played a role: the coach spent much of his early years in Western New York and was an assistant for Buffalo from 2015-2019. There also is the age-old assumption that neutral crowds cheer for the underdog. Why wouldn't you want David to take down Goliath?
Whatever the reason may be, the crowd of 15,000-plus was mostly pulling for a different Bulls roster on Thursday. South Florida ultimately fell to the six-seed Cardinals 83-79, but it wasn't for a lack of effort; willed on by the local faithful, the Bulls created a close game out of thin air.
"[I'm] extremely grateful for Western New York [and] the city of Buffalo for embracing this group," Hodgson said. "We definitely felt that. With that comes a little bit of a sense of letting people down. [We're] extremely grateful for the support we had. It definitely felt like a South Florida-pro crowd."
In the first half, there was very little to get excited about for the squad in the road uniforms. South Florida spent most of the first half playing to the complete opposite of its 88-point per game offense, settling for bad looks and blowing the better ones. The first-half shooting splits for the Bulls are ghastly: 10-for-35 shooting, 1-for-17 (5.9%) from deep.
The opening pop from the Buffalo crowd came when the lower seed needed one most. The Bulls were facing a game-high 14-point deficit late in the first half when Isaiah Jones came up with a steal. The senior had nothing but air in front of him, and he glided to the rim for his easiest basket of the tournament.
Louisville dribbled the ball up, and as if on cue, it lost it again. This time, Izaiyah Nelson had free reign to the basket, and arguably the best dunker on the floor delivered a thunderous jam. The deficit was at 10, and with the help of those fans who traveled from Tampa with green glowsticks in hand, the whole crowd was on its feet.
After things got better, some Isaac McKneely threes made the situation much, much worse for South Florida. Once the deficit started creeping over 20, Hodgson directed his guys to play a "seven seconds or less" offense. When they got the ball, they ran quick; when they didn't, they pressed and tried to force the Cardinals to run quick. The strategy worked for the most part, and slowly but surely, the 11-seed crept their way back into the game.
When the deficit got to 16, the Bulls reactivated their full-court trap. Louisville tried to make a diagonal pass, but Joseph Pinion was one step ahead. The Arkansas State transfer stepped in front of the ball, took it and tomahawked a one-handed jam all in one fluid motion. The crowd had officially been energized.
From there, it felt as if the Cardinals couldn't even bring the ball up the court. Every time the press came on, Bulls were appearing from new angles, sticking in their hands to jar the ball free. Over a five-minute span, Louisville turned the ball over eight times, making bad reads and taking their eye off the ball. Over this same timespan, Izaiyah Nelson began to heat up and the deficit was halved from 14 to seven.
South Florida clawing back allowed the underdog-happy crowd to live or die with every one of the game's decisions. If a Louisville ballhandler dared to take a step, the crowd complained with calls of a travel. If there was a jump ball called, why wasn't it a foul on the Cardinals? Every ball out-of-bounds would've been awarded to the Bulls if the fans had their way.
Ultimately, the lower seed couldn't string together enough stops and scores to come back from what was once a 23-point deficit. With 90 seconds to play, the Bulls had two good chances at creating a one-possession game for the first time in ages. Pinion rose up twice, and both were off-kilter. The Cardinals hit their free throws and won by four.
The final result doesn't displace the energy felt in Buffalo, however. The City of Good Neighbors embraced one of their own, and it almost helped the American champs rise up from the dead.