MILLIGAN COLLEGE, TN (November 8, 2004) --- The Milligan College Buffaloes Basketball team opened their 2004-2005 season with a win over Cincinnati Christian University by a 71-53 score Monday evening at the Steve Lacy Fieldhouse. With the win, Milligan starts the season 1-0 while CCU falls to 0-3.

Both teams traded baskets in the early portion of the first half but Milligan started to pull away with an 8-3 spurt to place the Buffs ahead 23-12 with 7:15 left in the half.

Milligan further extended their lead with a five point outburst from sophomore guard Nick Tuggle (Cordova, Tenn.) that put Milligan in front 32-16 with four minutes left in the half.

Milligan and CCU traded baskets to the end of the half as the Buffs led Cincinnati Christian 38-23 at halftime.

Cincinnati Christian started the second half with a 15-6 run topped by a three point basket from Ryan Maxwell (Cincinnati, Ohio) to see Milligan lead 46-38 with just over 14 minutes left in the contest.

CCU could not climb any closer that eight points deficit the rest of the game as Milligan pushed the lead out to as many as 23 before the final buzzer to give the Buffs a 71-53 victory.

Tuggle led the Buffs in scoring with 13 points on 6-13 shooting from the floor with a team high six rebounds. Senior forward Craig Emmert (Cass City, Mich.) also scored double-digit points with 11 points for Milligan while freshman guard Joe Brown (Blountville, Tenn.) came off the bench to go 3-5 from behind the three point line to rack up 9 points in his Milligan debut.

Sophomore forward Piotr Poprocki (Warsaw, Poland) of CCU led all scorers with 15 points.

Milligan out shot CCU as the Buffs went 28-57 (49.1 pct.) to CCU’s 20-59 (33.9 pct.) from the field to go along with Milligan’s 7-16 (43.8 pct.) from behind the three point line. The Buffaloes also out rebounded CCU 45-27.

“I thought we played well, we had a lot of mistakes that can be resolved,” said Milligan head coach Tony Wallingford, “Cincinnati Christian fought hard to the end, and gave us all we wanted.”

Next for the Buffs is a weekend road trip to play Ohio State-Newark and Ohio State-Marion Friday November 12 and Saturday November 13 respectively. The OSU-Newark game is a 7:00 p.m. tip-off while the OSU-Marion match-up is at 7:30 p.m.