Tulsa was being bullied and shoved around while not having the tools to put up a good fight back.

The much bigger and more physical Florida Atlantic took Tulsa’s lunch money, and everything else on Saturday in a 79-55 drubbing in front of an announced of 3,048 at the Reynolds Center.

By the time it was halftime, Tulsa (9-15, 3-8 AAC) was out of the game. It was such a total and complete dominance by FAU that the TU Legends Day crowd was, even more so, yearning for the old days.

“We’ve got to be able to fight above our weight class, we’ve got to be able to push and own space,” said Tulsa coach Eric Konkol. “I thought there were a number of times where we just gave in to the contact. We’ve got to be tougher.”

Officials rarely calling fouls on either side in the first half didn’t help the Golden Hurricane. Attempts at driving to the basket were met with severe resistance by Florida Atlantic (13-10, 6-4). Trey Carroll (6-7) had 5 of the 7 blocked shots by the Owls.

Amazingly, Tulsa was up 6-0 very early. But a 13-0 FAU run ended that quickly, and Tulsa was down 40-22 at half. When it got to 57-31 in the second half, it was clearly garbage time.

“They’re athletic. And they’ve got length. They were switching screens on top,” Konkol said of Florida Atlantic. “Any time there was dribble penetration, they would suffocate the perimeter, saying, ‘hey, we’re going to try and keep you in front with someone who is 6-10 or 6-11, and you’re going to have to score on top of us’.

“Dribble penetration and pitch game really doesn’t exist in the way they were trying to play today. And that gave us problems.”

Even with that said, it’s not like FAU has been a dominating team this season. No excuses for this performance.

While the Owls were coming up on Tulsa to prevent its 3-point shooters from getting a lot of good looks, certainly, Tulsa should have been more aggressive driving around FAU’s defenders, working the ball around. When TU occasionally successfully did that, the results were abysmal.

TU went 3 of 21 (14.3 percent) from behind the arc, and shot 31.7 percent from the field. Meanwhile, FAU was 8 of 15 in the first half (53.33 percent) on three’s - 12 of 28 (42.9 percent) overall, and 50 percent from the floor.

The number of wide-open threes the Owls made, where the players could square up and step into their shots was similar to the trey’s they made.

“Not a good day for us on the offensive end, and I thought that spilled over onto the defensive end,” Konkol said. “We cannot expect to have anything good happen, when you don’t give everything you’ve got. You’ve got to be able to play as hard as you can.”

Konkol was clearly saying that there were many on the team that didn’t give maximum effort.

Whether it was poor effort, or just plain lousy play, the results were the same.

Tulsa’s didn’t try to match FAU’s bigs with two big men of its own. The ineffectiveness of Tulsa’s post play was striking.

In 39 combined minutes, Tulsa’s four-man rotation of big men had 7 points total. Jared Garcia and Justin Amadi combined for 0 points in 23 minutes. Ian Smikle played tough with 4 points and 7 rebounds in 19 minutes. Matt Reed rarely played until garbage time.

Ty Archie scored 11 points to lead TU, while Dwon Odom and Braeden Carrington each scored 10 points.

Baba Miller (6-11) was the most devastating FAU player, going 7 of 11 from the floor, and 3 of 3 on three-pointers, to lead the Owls with 17 points and 11 rebounds.

“Definitely a step back. Very disappointed for so many reasons,” Konkol said. “Not just our performance, but doing it here at home.”

Tulsa’s next game is at Temple (14-9, 6-4) Wednesday night at 6 p.m.