XENIA, Ohio – Milligan University's men's basketball team rounded out their trip to the AIA Christmas Classic on the Athletes in Action campus in Xenia, Ohio on Wednesday afternoon. In their second matchup of the event, the Buffs went toe-to-toe with the Fighting Saints of the University of St. Francis (Ill.). In the end, St. Francis was too efficient for the Buffs to handle, as MU fell 81-67.

In the contest's opening minute, the Fighting Saints scored the first five points. From there, Milligan completed a 14-5 run to take a 14-10 lead with 14:09 left in the period. St. Francis would recover to score nine of the next 10 points and hold a 19-15 lead with 11:43 left. The Buffaloes would gain a lead one more time at 30-29 with 6:17 left, but USF ran away with the game toward the end of the period, stretching the lead to as many as 11 points at 43-32. Grant Hensley sunk a three just before the buzzer to cut the deficit down to eight points at the intermission, 43-35. Both teams shot the ball with relative ease, but the Fighting Saints claimed the better conversion rate. They hit on 60.7% of their attempts, including a 6-of-9 clip from beyond the arc. The Buffs' mark of 47.8% also included six made three-point jumpers, but a few more misses, having taken 13 attempts.

To begin the second period, it was more of the same hot shooting for USF, who made five of their first six shots. The Buffs also shot a strong 4-of-8 in that span prior to the first media timeout at 14:41. St. Francis came out that timeout and extended the lead from nine points to 13 at 59-46 with 13:00 to go before a Milligan timeout. By the time that the following media timeout took place at 9:12 remaining, the USF lead was 11. They would stretch that out to 15 points at 72-57 at the next stoppage with 6:06 left to be played. The two sides traded buckets for the rest of the battle, as the Fighting Saints emerged with an 81-67 triumph over the Buffaloes. For USF, it was another scalding hot half shooting the rock, as they sunk 14-of-26 from the field. It was a 13-of-29 shooting clip for Milligan to round out the second half.

Jake Benham led the Buffs in scoring, having tallied 16 points on a 5-of-11 day from beyond the arc, as all his shots came from distance. He also converted one four-point play. Elijah Bredwood scored 11 points on a 5-of-14 day from the floor. Hensley scored 10 first-half points, but he did not score in the second half, rounding out the double-digit scorers for MU. Ahmari Hicks hit three triples to score nine points in the bout.

A team-best five assists came from Bredwood, while Te'Jon McDaniel-McCormick totaled three. Both Benham and Zack Turner added a pair, and the list of Hensley, Hicks, Stefan Janevski and Bo Koebbe tacked on one apiece.

Bredwood was also the leading rebounder for Milligan, having hauled in six backboards. Benham touted four rebounds in the loss. Liviu Anton, along with McDaniel-McCormick, supplied three. Turner and Zivko Damjanovic were responsible for two each, and Hensley and Hicks grabbed a board, as well.

Bredwood and Hensley combined evenly to take the ball away from USF four times, while the other three steals came from Benham, McDaniel-McCormick and Koebbe. Damjanovic recorded Milligan's lone block.

Milligan (3-10, 2-5 AAC) will now have a few days to prepare for their NCAA DI exhibition matchup at Miami University (Ohio) in Oxford on Monday, Dec. 22.