hurley

yup good catch - you are correct

If he learns to shoot 3's he will be better then Perkins, but that is a big if.   Mballa is already more dominant on the boards and on defensive. Perkins career stats for comparison:

Josh Mballa stats since coming off the bench.  Clearly it is working. He has been a stud and the only thing that you can say is maybe he should be playing even more minutes.  

5W - 2L

If they hire Whitesell, Hodgson is going to Bama along with our recruiting class. If for some reason they chose to not hire Hodgson then you may as well do a nationwide search because you've lost the recruiting class anyways. In no way would Whitesell every be the correct choice

If Hodgson gets the job I am VERY optimistic about our future.  Coach was who done most of the recruiting (same as Oats did for Hurley), knows the team culture (no need to win over locker room) and no starting from scratch with an entirely new staff, recruits, playing style.  It is yet another step forward. Alnutt needs to continue to put trust in what he has built.  It is without doubt the best for both short-term and long-term success of this program. Always scary to hire a 1st time head coach, but this would also allow the program to utilize more resources as he will be significantly cheaper then an external hire.

2 minutes ago, mikescherrer8 said:

All these lies of him building Gonzaga of the east of distilling false hope into so many people. The university was coming around to build this thing and we are back to square one. Wow.

Square one!?  Absolutely not.  We are a mid-major that has been successful through two consecutive coaching stints. You nail one more and you are getting very close to leaving the dreaded stepping stone mid major job territory.

I'm sorry but Whitesell's record as a head coach is hardly a no-brainer and like it or not Hodgson is a much more attractive sell to a young recruit then an older Whitesell who's had his shot.

No interviews.  Hire Hodgson today.  He will likely be able to keep most of the team + recruits together. The same exciting brand of basketball. Doesn't need to win over the locker room and continues the lineage of hiring within in the same fashion that Gonzaga did to become who they are.  Hodgson is from WNY and in the time to come it success follows having your whole life here it becomes a much longer long term destination.  

Onward and upward!

Please please please hire Bryan Hodgson immediately and keep this team intact.  Graves please stay with us!

So sad 😞 I can't even be mad at him.  Thank you to Nate Oats and everything he has done for Buffalo!

For comparison my parents are longtime season ticket holders for the Siena Saints, who have a lot of local support and have had some very good years but nothing noteworthy the past decade.

They pay 375 per season ticket. Success drives interest, or in other words demand. This is a good thing. 

Maryland goes down to Nebraska.  Gotta figure we'll pass them in seeding now with a clean weekend in Cleveland.  

I would imagine this is a mistake, but Jay Bilas insinuates that we are out of the tourney in the event we lose in our conference. He has been a big advocate of Buffalo and ranks us 22 in this post, but interesting nonetheless. https://t.co/Zq0GgX4aVA

Win MAC and we’re a 5. Pull for all the favorites on the conference tournaments.

16 in net, 9 in RPI, 16 in Kenpom. 21 in AP poll.  If we win out and don’t get a at least 5 we’d be getting totally screwed. 

I have to massively disagree with a lot of posts in here in reference to effort. This was an extraordinary win for us.  A soul searching win.  To go down like we did so quickly after a gut-wrenching loss at NIU most kids would have doubted themselves if they were "that good". Massinburg struggled in the first half before finishing strong in the second. Harris and Graves were really off tonight.  One thing is for certain is every game is going to be very difficult.  It is actually a wonderful season long test for these kids not only as basketball players but as human beings who can overcome tough environments like tonight and what they will see in every road game this year.

I seriously think we all underestimate the importance of Perkins is to this team and that is saying a lot with everyone knowing his value to us.  When he scores a bucket or two down low the whole court opens up for us and the offense flows very smooth.  He was incredible tonight. 

I was EXTREMELY happy to see very strong games from Caruthers and Jordan offensively after both had struggled for the last stretch of games.

Even more so - wow Segu is going to be the real deal.  The kid is nowhere near as athletic as Jeenathan  but his confidence is next level stuff. He is going to be an incredible player once he puts some weight on.  Speaking of Jeenathan he finally is finding himself out there.  Outside of one bad shot he looked very good today.  

Our defense needs some work as does our rebounding as many have mentioned. With that being said this was a very entertaining game of two top quality teams.  If I was a coach or an AP voter tonight I would be very impressed with the MAC.  That crowd was loud, the game was at an incredible pace and the shots were falling.  This game was so much more entertaining then NIU game.  

Can not wait for Tuesday!! 

NIU Kenpom is 128 we lost on a buzzer beater on the road. Meanwhile TTU scored a mere 45 points tonight and dropped its third in a row.

Auburn lost to a 10-8, although good, South Carolina team.

Maryland game against MSU was closer to a blowout than a close game.

VT got waxed, but has a chance to get a good Home W this weekend against Cuse.

Ole Miss and Miss St look like garbage.

Handle business Friday we’re still well within top 25. First things first let clean things up.

The silver lining here is that our loss is hidden in a sea of losses this week in the top 25.  Here’s what we’ve already had so far this week.

10 VT lost by 21

13 UM lost by 13

24 ISU lost by 4

16 AUB lost by 3

22 MSU lost by 21

14 TTU lost by 13

20 MISS down by 28

Refs were atrocious and made for some nearly unwatchable basketball in the first half which certainly dictated the game to say otherwise is ignorant. I mean for god sakes Brock Bertram and Fagan both got minutes in the first half.

WITH THAT BEING SAID,

No way we should lose the game. Their top scorer is out most of the game with foul trouble himself.

Ive been saying that this game was coming after the way we’ve been playing.  You simply can’t expect to win when your turning the ball over the way we do. Jordan has been a disaster the last 3-4 games. Caruthers can’t buy a bucket. And we didn’t find a way to get the ball to Perkins down low enough.

Sky is the limit still for this team and while this loss is deveststing for a possible at large and seeding should we make the dance it’s likely a necessary wake up call that nothing is guaranteed.

I fully expect us to absolutely throttle Kent State on Friday.

This is a road bump that is a part of the season. No need to overreact. Good to get this stuff out of the system now. We’ll be back.

These have to be the worst refs of all time. 21 fouls in 12 minutes is nearly a foul every 30 seconds. Obscene. 

Great podcast w/ Nate today on Jon Rothstein's podcast.

https://soundcloud.com/compass-media/college-hoops-today-with-jon-rothstein-buffalos-nate-oats

I’m most interested in seeing us get back to a sub 10 turnover game and dominating on the boards. Win both those battles and we win by 15+ 

Win out this week with two clean road victories we may very well be a top 10 team.  Here are some keep games to keep an eye on this week:

Monday:

13 Maryland at 6 MSU

10 VT at 11 UNC

24 Iowa State at 9 Kansas

Tuesday:

22 Mississippi State at 8 Kentucky

14 Texas Tech at Kansas State

Thursday:

6 Michigan State at 19 Iowa

21 NC State at 23 Louisville

Friday:

5 Michigan at Indiana

Saturday:

24 ISU at 20 Ole Miss

3 Virginia at Notre Dame

WVU at 1 Tennessee

9 Kansas at 8 Kentucky

Syracuse  at 9 VT

16 Auburn at 22 Mississippi State

-------

Teams that could pass us from behind this week based on their upcoming games:

Auburn, Iowa State, Ole Miss, NC State, Louisville, Iowa

My guess? If we go 2-0 this week and win at least one game easily we will be #11 at the very worst come this time next week.  Media hype will pick up substantially. With all the top 25 match ups this week we have a big time chance this week.  LETS GET IT DONE!!

Also go Cuse and WVU!

At this point I’m more concerned with our upcoming games next week.

NIU is going to be a veryyy difficult game on the road followed on with an always tough road test at Kent State.

I don’t know much about NIU but I do know they are 3-1 in conference with 5 seniors on their team. Their top 4 scorers are all seniors. They have the experience and with the target on our back they’ll be amped up.  We can’t afford a slow start on Tuesday.  Need to jump out of the gates.

If we continue to have 13+ turnovers your going to lose games, which is fine, but to keep our at large chances alive we need to give ourselves as much room for error as possible. February is going to be very difficult. 

Go Bulls! 

Fun fact that I was unaware of:  We have the second most road wins (7) in the country behind only Stony Brook with 8 road wins.

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-net-rankings