Leaderboard

Realistically, I think the best UB can hope for is 1-7 vs the top 4; 3-2 vs middle 5; and 4-1 vs bottom 3, for a best-case record of 8-10 in MAC games. Admittedly, I’m setting the bar really low and hopefully the Bulls can exceed my expectations. Mainly want to see tougher defense than the past couple of seasons, and for the coaching staff to get the most they can out of this team and give the younger players reason to buy into the program and stick around for a few years to help build it back up.

That BG game was so bad i think it broke this message board. Not much commentary. What happened to Cole Snyder? was he hurt or pulled for being ineffective? I was watching some on the stream but not able to have the sound on. 238 yards in any MAC game is horrendous, but at home vs Bowling Green is even beyond that. When Ogbonna came in that made it one dimensional, BG knew he would mostly run or hand off. Seemed like he threw some jump balls but not much else. We must have a backup QB that can at least throw a decent pass.

This chart is based on three preseason rankings, barttorvik, evan miya and kenpom. How I interpret what these sites are saying Kent, Ohio, Akron and Toledo (?) are the top four teams. Toledo appears to be a notch below the other three - this seems reasonable to me. The Michigan schools are expected to be among the weakest in D1. Again no real arguments on that. Then there is the rest of the MAC. I think NIU is the strongest of the rest. NIU returned most of team from last year - if Keshawn Williams recovers fully from ACL injury, they will improve on their 9-9 last year. BG has a new head coach Simon who brought in a number of transfers including a player from his SUU team. If they can gel, they would be six seed. MOH has added a couple of D2 transfer and an intra-MAC transfer in Hunter (from NIU). Ball St is in a similar situation to UB, in that they will have to rely on freshman, after a number of transfer portal losses. The eighth seed will probably go to either UB or Ball St depending on contributions from FR. I am looking forward to getting the first glimpse at what we have in one week. I know that we will mostly just get a sense of rotation and little else from that game.

Not that it changes much, but CMU is also below us. I do feel UB makes the top 8, but it won't be easy for them, for the reasons you state. I expect the offense to struggle, so it will be up to how much the team buys into the 'All in Grit' to outperform this preseason projection. The top of the MAC seems low in the initial kenpom as each of the top 3 preseason ranks are roughly 20 spots below top 3 last year.

This is consistent with barttorvik. They have UB at 249. Evan Miya a little more optimistic has UB at 208. I am thinking around 225, so I am in the middle. Not a big surprise to me. For perspective, Akron was 219 / 255 on barttorvik and Kenpom respectively in Groce's first year. Boals was a bit better 149 and 167 on the same in his first year. This year probably can't be measured in w/l's.