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Buffalo @ Ball State (1/7 @ 7:00 pm)


Jeseph

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1 hour ago, skrabukes said:

Additionally, I didn't see Grant on the bench today. Sick/hurt/something else? Anyone hear anything?

I reached out to the team to try and see what was wrong with Gabe, if anything. I didn’t get a response, and this guy usually answers if I have an injury related question. 

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1 hour ago, thatdudeBlume said:

+1

+2.

I have long-term concerns: If chemistry on this team is as bad as it appears, how many of the underclassmen will still be here next season? How will the team's current performance affect recruiting? I'm probably overreacting. It just feels a little perilous at the moment.

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5 hours ago, Ubbulls84 said:

Why is Johnson in this game? He can’t do anything.

And he ends up as our leading scorer for the game...our chances of winning have to be pretty close to zero when this happens. His playing time isn't going anywhere though - guess the same can't be said for Grant (mercifully). This team seems comparable to Oats' first season in many ways, but sadly these guys are not Blake Hamilton and Willie Conner and most likely we will not see similar success come March.

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10 hours ago, UBCourtside said:

I reached out to the team to try and see what was wrong with Gabe, if anything. I didn’t get a response, and this guy usually answers if I have an injury related question. 

Just got confirmation back that Gabe Grant was not injured for this game, for those who were wondering.

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This was interesting. I see it from two perspectives.

1. Buffalo - We are a very talented team still. The biggest concern that I have with this team is the selfish ball that is very clear throughout the game on both offense and defense. In my mind, that comes to coaching and captains, especially as most of the new players were going to adopt Oats style of play and knew what they were coming into. This should have been pushed by the new leaders of the team, Jordan, Graves, and Brock (I mention Brock because the bench clearly loves him). I don't know how we took such a step back in that department. Our players play similar to how we did under Oats but we were unselfish then. How many times did we drive to the rim, kick it out to the outside and another quick pass for a wide open three. The extra pass was always there. In some of our fast breaks on 3 on 1. Our players won't even pass the ball for the easy basket, they want to pad up their own stats.

 

2. Every other MAC team - For 5 years, we have literally owned the MAC. We might know our team isn't that caliper, but we will still get the best from every MAC team this season. You heard the Ball State announcers talking about it so much too. I just feel like our team is going to get overwhelmed playing everyone's best ball. Putting myself in other team's shoes, it must be nice to be able to finally beat us after that much time has passed.

 

Not ready to say that the season is a complete bust. But last night was definitely an embarrassment. The players felt that as well. It will be interesting how they rebound. 

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It sure seems like there’s trouble in river city. However with adversity comes  great opportunity. The players and coaches backs are up against the proverbial wall. It’s an opportunity to respond. But they’ll have to rally a work ethic and team first philosophy while focusing on doing the abcs of solid good basketball, defense, rebounding, making the extra pass, intensity, never giving up transition buckets. You do these things other deficiencies can be overcome. Let’s see what happens. 

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  • Jeseph unpinned this topic

Much has been written here that lambastes the Bulls’ defense, their lack of hustle, selfishness, lack of urgency, and even teammates foray into post game tweets that presumably showcase individual feats of accomplishment (even after team losses!). At the same time, the number of posts insisting that this team is among the most athletically talented in the MAC has virtually disappeared. I want to return to an observation that I made in November. This is a guard laden team. It has virtually no depth in quality bigs. And so far, as a team, two areas of inadequacy stand out: poor three point shooting and abysmal foul shooting. I don’t know how you turn that around in the short term. You can improve your team’s chances of winning by getting better defensive efforts, but if you continue to shoot the ball as poorly as the Bulls have (at least in all their losses), your prospects for a successful season are slim.
 

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1 hour ago, squire17 said:

Much has been written here that lambastes the Bulls’ defense, their lack of hustle, selfishness, lack of urgency, and even teammates foray into post game tweets that presumably showcase individual feats of accomplishment (even after team losses!). At the same time, the number of posts insisting that this team is among the most athletically talented in the MAC has virtually disappeared. I want to return to an observation that I made in November. This is a guard laden team. It has virtually no depth in quality bigs. And so far, as a team, two areas of inadequacy stand out: poor three point shooting and abysmal foul shooting. I don’t know how you turn that around in the short term. You can improve your team’s chances of winning by getting better defensive efforts, but if you continue to shoot the ball as poorly as the Bulls have (at least in all their losses), your prospects for a successful season are slim.
 

Aren’t guard oriented teams usually decent at foul shooting, 3 point shooting and not turning the ball over? Aren’t guards more agile and mobile on defense? To me it starts and ends with the defensive effort. Whether we are guard oriented or whatever, the defense needs to be better. We won’t win many games allowing close to 90 points and almost 50% shooting.

Guys like Nickleberry, Johnson and Grant have been duds. Nickleberry is 6’7 and Grant is 6’6 yet neither can sniff the court. I didn’t expect Nickleberry to be Jeremy Harris but I thought he’d be more useful. And Grant and Johnson...well we know their shortcomings. Williams and Segu have improved but it’s unfair to rely on them as leaders, they are just sophomores. I thought Jordan would be more of a vocal floor leader and Graves would be his assassin self. With Johnson and Grant being senior leaders too. Hardnett gets a slight pass bc he didn’t play all of last year. Mballa had a rough opening 6 minutes last night but overall he’s been good. I just thought, yea there would be a drop off, but it wouldn’t be so bad given that we had returning players from last year. I guess Grant and Johnson just don’t have that winner gene. They have the selfish gene.

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12 hours ago, DooleyBull06 said:

Guys like Nickleberry, Johnson and Grant have been duds. Nickleberry is 6’7 and Grant is 6’6 yet neither can sniff the court.

Nickleberry is easily one of the most disappointing players we have. His stats in JUCO strongly emulated Jeremy Harris. And he has been a ghost, which is surprising since how highly rated he was as a recruit and how successful he was in JUCO. Johnson, well you know the story. The guy stinks.

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12 hours ago, mikescherrer8 said:

Nickleberry is easily one of the most disappointing players we have. His stats in JUCO strongly emulated Jeremy Harris. And he has been a ghost, which is surprising since how highly rated he was as a recruit and how successful he was in JUCO. Johnson, well you know the story. The guy stinks.

Jeremy Harris was the #2 JUCO recruit.  Not an extensive sample, but looking at the the 2019 rankings, the Top 10 JUCO recruits in 2019 have generally been productive.  After that, there are successes in next 15, but there are some who didn't pan out.  Looks like us losing out on Rojas to Alabama will prove to be a loss , but can't tell since he got hurt.  Andre Allen has played very little this year (has not played since Nov 23rd - does anyone know if he is hurt or just on the bench).  

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Edited by DocCas86
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Jeremy Harris was a great athlete for UB. He shot over 40% from 3 in his first season as a Bull. Inexplicably, he shot slightly better than 25% from 3 in his final season. He regressed. And yet he did enough other things well in his second year that almost
compensated for the drop off in 3 point accuracy. The transfers and JUCOs that currently play for UB have not brought much in the way of positive development. With the exception of Mballa, it appears that the new members are a bust.

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52 minutes ago, squire17 said:

Jeremy Harris was a great athlete for UB. He shot over 40% from 3 in his first season as a Bull. Inexplicably, he shot slightly better than 25% from 3 in his final season. He regressed. And yet he did enough other things well in his second year that almost
compensated for the drop off in 3 point accuracy. The transfers and JUCOs that currently play for UB have not brought much in the way of positive development. With the exception of Mballa, it appears that the new members are a bust.

Hardnett has shown flashes too, and he has been playing out of position, he isn't a center. Luckily for us, those two are the youngest of the transfers.

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1 hour ago, squire17 said:

With the exception of Mballa, it appears that the new members are a bust.

I agree with this. Which is hard to accept bc going into the season I thought Johnson and Grant would be heavily relied upon. Both as seniors and having been around this team during last years run and both being scoring threats. What I didn’t expect was no leadership from them and this volume scoring mentality. And their lack of commitment to defense. 

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