The three-game win streak was nice. Now it's history.
A veteran and physical Buffalo team put it to Central Michigan on Saturday, handing the Chippewas a 74-54 Mid-American Conference men's basketball loss at McGuirk Arena.
The Chippewas slipped to 5-14, 4-4 MAC. Buffalo, one of the league's premier programs over the past decade, is 11-8, 5-4.
CMU is scheduled to play at Ball State on Tuesday, Feb. 8, beginning a second consecutive week in which it will play three games.
"The enemy of progression is being complacent," first-year CMU coach Tony Barbee said. "It's part of the learning curve; it's part of the learning process."
CMU had won its last three starts and appeared to be turning the corner after a tough start to the season against a tough-as-nails nonconference slate and COVID issues that forced the postponement of several games.
Saturday's game, Barbee said, may have served as a wakeup call.
"All of a sudden everybody starts telling you how good you are, and you start reading (social media) and everyone telling you how great you are," he said. "You can use that as fuel to continue to grow and get better or you can become complacent.
"We haven't done anything. We won three games in a row, what does that mean? You've got to learn how to handle success. That's part of growing, building a program."
The Bulls dominated the boards, finishing with 49 rebounds to the Chippewas' 27. They held CMU to five 3-pointers on 21 attempts, their worst long-range game, percentage wise (.238), since Dec. 1.
The Bulls took the lead midway through the first half and then crept away to a 34-27 halftime lead. They outscored the Chippewas, 40-27, in the second half and led by as many as 27 points.
"Give Buffalo credit, they're a veteran, experienced team and they were the bully on the block tonight," Barbee said. "We got punched in the mouth and we went away."
It was CMU's third game in five days, but Barbee refused to point to fatigue as a factor.
"I think it was Buffalo and how hard they play and how they defended and how casual we were," he said. "I don't think it had anything to do with fatigue.
"They were the team that played harder and played tougher and that's what we've done over the course of the last four games," he said. "We weren't that team tonight."
Ralph Bissainthe scored a season-high 19 points to lead CMU. Point guard Kevin Miller added 14 points and Brian Taylor added 10. Miller, who had averaged 8.3 assists over his last three games, was held to two assists.
"It's all about focus and we can't be complacent," Bissainthe said. "Winning three games in a row feels good, but we can't let that get us off track. We just started feeling good about ourselves … people were starting to talk about us. We can't let that steer us off track and deter our vision. We've got to stay hungry."
