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It's hours later and I'm still livid about this one. I tried to remember the last time I left Alumni that angry about a loss. Niagara isn't a very good team, and the Bulls didn't play great in the first half, but they played decent basketball, good enough with a couple three's by Sabol towards the end to leave them with a 10 point lead at the half. Enough to get me out of my seat for once, the closest they've had to a 'run' in some time. They were playing good defense, forcing bad shots and cleaning up rebounds. Like you're supposed to. As one should be afraid, they came out sloppy after the break and Niagara went on a big run, flipping the script. It came down to a couple possessions at the end where UB couldn't hit a shot that they needed. When you look at the stats, yet again, when you're an undersized team you absolutely have to shoot well from outside, and this team can't. They shot horribly from the free throw line, which was also decisive in the end. They played good defense in the first half but they lack basketball sense to deal with things like back-door cuts. Chatman - the guy scores 29 points but I left furious at him. He blows foul shots when they absolutely need them. Takes a charge on a play at the end that could've given them a chance and instead of passing it off, goes right at the guy obviously set up to block him. In the second half, in successive plays, doesn't get a call so while Niagara is dribbling past him, he's focused on complaining to the ref, and in the next possession gets torched on D. They are missing a lot without him but I can't stand watching him a lot of the time. His in-game demeanor is terrible. He acts like he's a big deal, on a team that has zero wins this season against fellow D1 opponents. Sabol - again, he will be decent someday, but he's working through freshman mistakes right now. Zakir - win that tough battle underneath, great - then miss BOTH free throws. Come on. Isaiah - it was great to see him back, and he played like he was a senior leader trying to be assertive. Graham - he has a lot of potential. He just seems rusty. McVeigh - plays tough defense, but at this point is less than useless shooting the ball. I didn't miss Smith, I have nothing bad to say, he just can't match up effectively against bigger, better inside players and I don't think he ever will at this point. I didn't miss Kanye, he's sloppy with the ball. Niagara - they're not good either. Grossed out to see Bumbalough out there against the Bulls again. They made adjustments and got fired up at halftime to flip the script, credit to their coaches. By the way, I don't put too much of this on Alnutt. It's way too early to judge Halcovage, but no one saw this as a total tear-down rebuild. Linguist looked great on paper, so did Halcovage - I would hire both myself based on their resumes. One was a position coach in the NFL who can recruit; the other was an assistant at a Big East team with two recent national titles. Try and tell me you wouldn't hire either of them at this level based on that. You can't know what's to come from there. But I do appreciate the people who say, the buck stops there (at the top). I think he hired people with good resumes but he'll be held by many to their results. I was so fired up at halftime for once. I hoped this team could play with a forward winning mindset, and that melted away in a couple minutes. This was a disgusting loss, especially since I don't know who they're going to beat at all from here. They can't defend consistently inside, they can't shoot from outside, they get torched by anyone playing on a higher thought process. A poster a while ago talked about how this was their worst start since 1992. I was at those games, I was in middle school, and that's not a fair comparison. That team was in its first year in D1, with a roster of D3 players and a D3 coach plus a senior transfer John Blalock who basically was their whole offense. This team is an existing D1 team with D1 players. They don't get the benefit of that comparison. Can you tell how disgusted I am with this? I wanted to march down there afterwards and yell "where is your pride?!!" "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Or like Chief Wiggum with his tie caught in the hot dog roller at the Kwik-E-Mart, "Oh boy, this is going to get worse, before it gets better."

It’s time to accept if you haven’t already that this team may be the absolute worst in D1 basketball. Recruiting seems non-existent. Not sure what Halcovage is doing right, if he’s doing anything at all. We absolutely need to address Alnutt before we even consider looking at the current MBB coaching staff.

And just like that Ogden shoots herself out of the slump!!

Tough to follow Enrique's post, it captures my disappointment perfectly. I was hopeful that the team had turned the corner on some early season problems (defense and turnovers), and just needed to shoot better and they would come away with a win. Well they shot better 50.9% eFG% - about the D1 average. However, they turned the ball over 17 times (1 in every 4 possessions). If they had only 12 turnovers (about the D1 average rate) they would have likely scored 6 more points. Combine that with leaving 3 or 4 points at the FT stripe - and that is the difference between a win and a loss. If they continue to average 3-5 more turnovers than their opponents - they start off each game with a 4-6 point deficit. They do not have much chance to counter that. I can't help but think back to this past summer and comments from the board that the team needed another ball handler. That may be the biggest miss so far of Halcovage's first team.

There's zero chance they go winless in MAC. Even if they are 10% to win every game (and they'll be much higher than that in most games), they will win a few. Think back to our amazing team. We were miles better than NIU and yet we took an L to them. This team, as bad as they've shown, is not capable of going winless in league unless they completely quit. If that happens, oh boy, it will be ugly. No Jo, no Kanye, what was going on with that tonight?

Respectfully, describing what has happened here as "the slightest bump in the road" is rather ridiculous. And I don't think it's fair to call fans weak for being shocked at our program plummeting to the worst in D1. A lot of us maintained a pretty positive attitude through Whitesell's .500 season. This isn't complaining just for the fun of it - this is a shocking season, and us on a message board pretending otherwise isn't going to change that.

This doesn’t make firing Whitesell a bad decision, it just suggests a bad hire was made.

Preface by saying this is purely a hypothetical at this point: if this team goes winless*, do they fire GH3 after 1 season? How can you not? * I'm not counting a win over D-2 Roberts Wesleyan

For a few minutes, I forgot that we were 350th ranked. My bad.

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A lot of promotions for the staff from their previous roles as coaches. Very similar to the route that Mo took in football. No one on either staff to mentor such an inexperienced coaching group. Maybe both teams would have benefited from an ex "Head Coach" sitting next to them on the bench / sidelines.

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Sadly, not seeing you or MM at games any longer is disappointing. 2 staunch supporters driven out by completely unwatchable basketball.

Good to see you back here. Always thoughtful with great perspective.

There have been some great posts in this thread. I refuse to believe that we are late 90s Chicago state bad. That team literally looked like 6 guys pulled off from Delaware park. It's pretty embarrassing that we are compared to that, but sadly, it's not as far off as I'd like to think.

Right. Since we're paying two coaches right now, which one would we all rather have on our sideline at the moment earning that paycheck? For me the answer is Whitesell 100%.

We are bad. Lack talent. Struggle to shoot the ball. Lack hustle. Poor coaching. Rough to watch. Consistently underperform at home. I mean we have to win a game at some point, but man, I’m not confident about winning any game this year.

It absolutely makes firing Whitesell a bad move if this was the plan for what followed. The firing doesn't happen in a vacuum, it was a decision of Whitesell vs the feasible alternatives. They appear to have massively overestimated the quality of the feasible alternatives.

I’ve held off on commenting about men’s hoops because i feel the new coach needed a fair chance to get this club to jell or whatever. But losing to a lousy Niagara team at home, even after being up by 10 at the half?!? nah, this has to change. Either this coach is terrible or they recruited terrible players…which is still on the coach. The AD needs to answer to this too. UB men’s basketball was the one shining star of athletics and they are literally worst in the country at their level.

People need to start getting fired.

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Oops