Bison

John Griffin made two free throws with 9.5 seconds left to give Bucknell a 67-66 win over La Salle in a nonleague game last night at Sojka Pavilion. Ruben Guillandeaux's layup for La Salle with three seconds left hung on the rim and fell out. The Explorers (3-3), who blew a 12-point halftime lead, got 25 points from guard Darnell Harris and 11 from Guillandeaux. La Salle had held a 39-27 halftime lead. Griffin led Bucknell (3-4) with 21 points. Forward Patrick Behan added 18. The Explorers outrebounded the Bison, 34-31, as forward Paul Johnson pulled down nine boards.

The future might not be now for young St. Joseph's, but it started to come into focus yesterday before a riled-up sellout crowd at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse. The Hawks did something they were unable to accomplish each of the last two seasons: They defeated a Bucknell team that will likely be heard from when the season gets into full throttle. "They came in here and wore us out two years ago, and not many people have done that to us the last several years," coach Phil Martelli said after St. Joe's (3-0)

Coach Jim Calhoun and the streaking Connecticut Huskies (26-9) open NCAA tournament play Thursday in the West Regional against No. 14 seed Bucknell (25-8) in Washington, D.C. UConn earned a No. 3 seed by winning five games - four against ranked teams - in five days to become the Big East champion. It was an incredible run considering that the Huskies went 9-9 in the conference and went in with three losses in four games. "When I put it back in perspective, after the two national championships [in 1999 and 2004]

PULLING HIS PICKUP truck alongside a 60-foot-long, 5-foot-wide trough filled with yellowish-brown grain, Gary Schuler cracks a small smile and softly says, "I call it my golden feedbowl. " Given that a few moments later he refers to a nearby mound of manure as "black gold" and a manure spreader he once used to distribute vegetable trimmings to his grazing herds as a "salad shooter," it's clear that Schuler has a penchant for wryly colorful euphemisms. But the grain filling that mammoth trough is something special, one stop on a cyclic chain that Schuler refers to as "beer, barley and buffalo.

Buffalo will roam in Bucks County. West Rockhill has approved Telford bison farmer Gary Schuler's plan to graze 20 animals on property he bought in the township. It will be the county's second buffalo farm - and one of a handful in this region. "I think people would like to see buffalo," said Schuler. "I talked to some people there about it. They're neat. They're more active than regular cows, so they're fun to watch. [And] they're part of American history. " Unlike other types of livestock and horses, bison are native to North America.

It was nearly a half-hour after the final horn signaled a third consecutive loss for St. Joseph's last night, and the Hawks were still in full uniform, slumped in front of their lockers trying to sort out their problems, wondering how Bucknell could come into Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse, where St. Joe's rarely loses, and pretty much get any shot it wanted. "Honestly, I'm clueless as to what to say," senior Pat Carroll said after St. Joe's (3-5) lost for the first time on its campus in 13 games, going down against the well-drilled Bison, 69-62.

Bucknell football player Willie Hill, a Vineland High graduate, was named an NCAA Division I-AA all-American yesterday. Hill, a 6-foot, 210-pound senior linebacker, led the Bison (10-1) in tackles with 133 and in unassisted tackles with 78. He also had 2.5 sacks, four pass breakups and a fumble recovery. "It was a surprise that I got it," Hill said of the all-America honor. "But since the preseason, my teammates have joked with me about it and I tried not to play weighted down with those expectations.

After the first couple of plays, Villanova nose tackle Tim Matas usually has an inkling if it's going to be a good day or a bad day. Against Bucknell yesterday afternoon, Matas said, it barely took that long to figure out it was going to be a great day. The first time the Bison got the ball, it was three plays and out. The next time, three plays and then a punt. Third series, three and out again. Villanova's offense was just as brutally efficient. The Wildcats scored four times on their first five possessions.

Entering his team's second-round NCAA tournament game yesterday against top-seeded Memphis, Bucknell coach Pat Flannery pointed to turnovers and shooting as being the difference between winning and losing. As it turned out, 19 miscues with the ball and a season-low 15 field goals certainly set the stage for the Bison's 72-56 loss before a crowd of 19,251 at American Airlines Center. With the win, top-seeded Memphis (32-3) moved into a Sweet 16 contest against Bradley (22-10)

It had been 11 days since the St. Joseph's Hawks had played against someone other than themselves when they took the floor against Bucknell last night at the glistening, jam-packed Sojka Pavilion. And with the well-drilled, experienced Bison sitting on the fringe of a national ranking, that semester-break gap in the St. Joe's schedule gave coach Phil Martelli an uneasy feeling. Anyone playing Bucknell this season had better be in rhythm, because coach Pat Flannery's group had knocked off three top-20 teams since January.

MICHIGAN WON the varsity eight heavyweight race to capture the men's team point trophy championship at the 74th Dad Vail Regatta on the Schuylkill River on Saturday. Michigan finished in 5:58.604. Florida Institute of Technology was second in 5:58.946. Drexel (6:02.401) finished third and Temple (6:06.266) took fifth. Duke won the women's heavyweight eight championship in 06:43.796. Bucknell finished second in 6:44.037 and won the overall women's team point trophy.

Bucknell has played on the grand stage of the NCAA Tournament more than once in the past 6 years and owns postseason victories over Kansas and Arkansas. So even facing the top-ranked team in the nation shouldn't have fazed the Bison. Coach Dave Paulsen thought otherwise after Bucknell missed too many open shots in a first half that quickly slipped away in an 80-61 loss at No. 1 Syracuse. "I thought our team in the first half came in in awe of them," Paulsen said. "We have tremendous respect for Syracuse and their ability and their talent, but we'd like to think that we would not come in in awe. We had some decent looks and couldn't knock them down.

HARRISBURG - Rather than let the animals drown in Tropical Storm Lee's rapidly rising floodwaters, zookeepers at Hersheypark's ZooAmerica shot their two beloved American bison to death - and prompted howls of anger across cyberspace. ZooAmerica said in a statement that "unprecedented flooding" trapped the 2,000-pound animals in their pen Wednesday night, while keepers were able to evacuate other zoo inhabitants. "Unfortunately, no one could anticipate a weather event that went from inches of rain to feet of flooding in a matter of a few short minutes," the zoo said in its statement.

  ALLENTOWN - The Buffalo Bisons opened their 10-game road trip with a 2-1 International League victory over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs on Saturday night. Bisons pitcher Miguel Batista stranded nine runners, including loaded bases in the fourth, in 52/3 innings of work. Lehigh Valley stranded 14 baserunners. In his fourth start and sixth appearance with Buffalo, Batista allowed eight hits and one run, striking out eight. The IronPigs had runners on the corners and two outs in the eighth but closer Dale Thayer escaped on a hard grounder snagged by third baseman Josh Satin.

BUFFALO - A six-run third inning by Buffalo put Lehigh Valley into a hole it couldn't climb out of, and the Bisons went on to defeat the IronPigs, 7-5, Wednesday in an International League contest. Two home runs by Brian Bocock and a round-tripper by Tagg Bozied weren't enough as the IronPigs' rally in the fifth and sixth innings fell short. Reading 2, Altoona 1 ALTOONA, Pa. - Tim Kennelly hit a tie-breaking homer in the fifth inning and the R-Phils held on to give Austin Hyatt the Eastern League victory.

PULLING HIS PICKUP truck alongside a 60-foot-long, 5-foot-wide trough filled with yellowish-brown grain, Gary Schuler cracks a small smile and softly says, "I call it my golden feedbowl. " Given that a few moments later he refers to a nearby mound of manure as "black gold" and a manure spreader he once used to distribute vegetable trimmings to his grazing herds as a "salad shooter," it's clear that Schuler has a penchant for wryly colorful euphemisms. But the grain filling that mammoth trough is something special, one stop on a cyclic chain that Schuler refers to as "beer, barley and buffalo.