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It's worth mentioning that Howard scored 45 against Kansas State earlier in the season, and Kansas State is rated as the second best defensive team in the country on kenpom. Between that, the game I just watched, and what Marquette fans have had to say, it's pretty clear that good defense can't stop Markus Howard when he's on. No shame in losing this one.

This is incredible! This essentially labels him as a top 20 player in the country so far. It's amazing how far this program has come

I think this is a game where we match up really well. Marquette is a very perimeter oriented team. The key I think is going to be keeping Jordan and Caruthers out of foul trouble, which will be a challenge considering how good Howard is at getting to the line. But this is the perfect game to have multiple suffocating on ball defenders.

Graham Couch is a particularly interesting case. He isn't ranking teams that have not played a road game so far this season. This means he left Kansas, Duke, Tennessee, Auburn, and Texas Tech unranked even though they are all in the top 11 currently. I think he even said that once Tennessee plays a road game next week, he might put them at number 1.

With this win, we moved up to 32nd in kenpom, which is especially impressive considering part of the ranking at this point in the season still consists of their "preseason ranking", which had us in the 70's. Even more fun, is that we are ranked ahead of every team in the PAC 12 on kenpom.

Andy Katz released his own bracket and has us as a 4 seed. He sure likes this team!

They are both transfers that get to play their one year next season.

I was checking Cierra Dillard's stats out of curiosity, and discovered that she is leading the nation in points per game! Looking at the women's hoops twitter feed I guess they discovered that first. Also worth noting that Dillard has the most free throws made in the country as well. It's been said several times already on this board, but I think it's worth emphasizing even more that we need to take the time to watch and appreciate a talent like this while we have it at UB.

Yeah definitely this, and preseason hype factors into it. The only reason Kentucky is even ranked at this point is because of preseason hype, and yet they are 10th. Purdue was expected to be good so that's why they jumped us. This isn't to say that preseason expectations should be ignored, but I feel like there's got to be a better balance. BTW Furman should easily be ranked at this point, especially ahead of Villanova

Ranked 25 in the AP Poll! https://collegebasketball.ap.org/poll

I think I was most impressed by Davonta Jordan this game. He had a really complete game, 3 steals, 3 blocks, took 2 charges, held their best scorer to 4-14 shooting and 6 turnovers, but most importantly, knocked down two 3's. If he can consistently make open 3's this year, that's going to help a lot with our spacing

The Preseason AP Poll was released today. UB received 14 votes, which was tied for 37th most in the poll. West Virginia comes in ranked 13th, Syracuse ranked 16th, and Marquette had 124 votes which would put them 27th.

Mainly posting this article here because parts of this article focus on UB and coach Oats. Definitely interesting to get a feel for the strategy Oats takes when scheduling games Article