JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville University men's basketball team (3-2) showed a competitive grit on Tuesday night despite coming up short to Campbell (2-0), 80-78 in its opening matchup of the BSN Sports Dolphin Classic. The final tally is far from an accurate indicator of just how impressive this performance was on both sides.

Jacksonville jumped ahead early and led 9-0 with 17:08 to play in the first half but later surrendered a series of Campbell runs, including one of 14-0, and trailed by 22 points with 4:55 to go in the half. That's a 31-point swing in just over 12 minutes of game action. It would have been really easy for the Dolphins to fold up the tent and look ahead to Florida National on Wednesday when trailing by 17 at the break, 49-32, but they did the opposite. They battled.

By the end of the night, Dontarius James had collected a new career-high 23 points on 8-15 shooting and 3-6 from deep. He also chipped in a perfect 4-4 effort at the charity stripe to go with a pair of rebounds and a block. The junior, Xavier transfer, scored 11 of his 23 in the first half to keep the Dolphins afloat then later knocked down the pull-up jumper that pushed his team into the lead with 6:09 to play.

That's right, Jacksonville trailed by 22 with 4:55 to play in the first half and 17 at the break only to battle back and take the lead, 65-63, with 6:09 left.

There were a couple unexpected sparks for Jacksonville in this one. Corey Romich, a senior who has seen sparse playing time in his career that has carved out a niche in the starting lineup so far this season, assisted a James triple to cut the Campbell lead from 16 to 13 with 16:32 to go. Romich later canned a pull-up, step-back three ball to trim the deficit to five and delivered a no-look dump-off to Mo Arnold in the lane for the score that knotted the game at 63 with 7:03 to play. He added a steal and another assist to his line during that stretch to round out his sterling effort.

Trey Sides knocked down a huge three ball during the comeback and Derrick Flowers provided a lift when the Dolphins needed it most, with Tyreese Davis, Diante Wood and Sides all on the sideline with four fouls and depth at a premium. Flowers contributed an assist and a rebound.

But the second half of this game truly belonged to Mo Arnold, whose propensity for raising his level in the biggest of moments is becoming more prolific with each passing game. Arnold collected 15 of his season-high 17 points in the second half, ending up just one-point shy of matching his career-high.

Arnold was un-guardable in the lane. He scored or assisted on six of the first eight points of the second half then carried the torch as the Dolphins chipped away at the Campbell lead. He scored the game-tying bucket at the 7:15 mark and knocked down a triple with 17 seconds left to chop the deficit to two. He was intentionally fouled with Jacksonville trailing by three and less than 10 seconds to play and despite shooting just 44.4 percent from the stripe thus far in his career, he canned both to make it a one-point game. Then it was Arnold whose 35-foot cast, that if true would have won the game, rang off the back iron to allow the Camels to escape with victory.

Bryce Workman quietly, nearly picked up his first double-double of the season by pitching in 11 points and hauling in a game-high nine rebounds. Arnold added seven boards to go with his 17 points and Davis chipped in 13 points to go with eight boards while battling foul trouble all night.

The Dolphins shot 47.3 percent from the floor and was 8-21 from deep while Campbell shot 54.4 percent. Jacksonville crushed the Camels on the boards, 37-26, and out-dueled them 11-4 in second chance points but a 14-8 turnover disadvantage allow Campbell to create a 16-7 edge in points off turnovers to create the difference in this one.

Just another classic inside Swisher Gymnasium.

Jacksonville won't have much time to think on this one as the team will be back on the floor for its second matchup of the BSN Sports Dolphin Classic on Wednesday at 7 p.m. opposite Florida National. Campbell will have the matinee matchup with New Orleans at 2:30 p.m.