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Thank you... to be honest I didn't think this resonated with people. There are certainly a lot of factors that contribute to team success and the fact that the team was very experienced last year and had years playing together definitely helped. However as it was pointed out to me is that each of the players had to be committed and work hard at improving. You also had Oats pushing them. I am not at practices now and can't judge Whitesell yet, but he will have to find ways the rest of this year to get team to balance teaching and motivating the team to. continually push themselves. One thing that this team does well that points to hard work it's the offensive rebounding. Let's hope they progress in remainder of this year and into next.

I was speaking more in terms of getting practice and video time in. Back to the grind of trying to work on things we have issues with.

Doc, I appreciate this more and more each time I look at it. To me, it really shows the importance of having a core of players who stick together for 4 years. All the board comments asking, "who is the go to scorer?", got me to begin to compare the current player's experience (in terms of years, years together, games played/started, points scored and other stats) with those of the previous teams It's still much too rough, and may never be polished enough to share. But for exmple, I feel like if people want Graves to be THE end of game guy, then compare his current point total with CJ's from mid '17-'18 (the same eligibility year). Do they have similar scoring experience? Should we really expect the same results? Anyway, thanks for the graphic, and keep them coming! (if I had time, I'd also track the seniority level and experience within the other MAC teams... attempting to predict where each school was in their mid-major boom and bust cycle.)

I think it's easy to look at these questions as personnel questions - i.e. we're losing X, will Y be able to replace him? I kinda want to approach it a little differently - how can UB's "system" be changed to accommodate the players they have. This is an uptempo, frantic-paced offense that gets off a lot of shots. This also invariably leads to turnovers. It's also predicated on playing defense, creating turnovers, getting out in transition. In years past, they had such a potent offense and a very solid defense, that made it easy to overlook the turnovers. This offense is not the offense of last year. They do not appear to have - at least right now, all of these guys are progressing so who knows where they end up - the offensive consistency to play like they did last year and win like they did last year. What they do still have, IMO, is premier athleticism compared to the rest of the MAC. They massively outrebound every team they play. Whitesell did not run these kinds of offenses at Loyola-Chicago. I suspect that he kept the same offensive identity because it's what worked in the past, and what helped bring in recruits, excitement for the program. UB does not need to play like they do. I'm not saying go back to Reggie ball, or play some Tony Bennett defense, but what I am saying is that there has to be a better system for the players on this team. The only player on this team who really struggles to get to the rim is Segu. UB should be able to out-hustle and out-muscle every team in this conference. That's not gonna win you every game, but it's a great head start. I'm just sorta rambling at this point. I don't know what the answer is. But this team looks far too lost on both sides of the ball at times, takes too many ill-advised threes, that I can't imagine there isn't a better fit overall scheme out there. Maybe it's time to dial back this offensive gameplan.

Assuming all players currently on the roster stay, we would only have 1 spot remaining for next season. Still a lot of time left in this season before we worry fully about next season. If everyone remains in place, next year looks solid on paper. I still want to see a big jump this season. I appear to be in the minority on here, but no matter what happened yesterday or earlier in the season, this team is still capable of winning a lot of games this season. While we all would've loved to have seen more wins to this point, it is what it is, but until this season is over or they show that they are incapable of winning games, I will not give up on this season or the players and staff that comprise it.