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I get where you are coming from with respect to transfers - but I still feel this past year's team had too many FR. Here is a snapshot of UB vs Ark St rosters Hodgson added nothing but transfers to two existing key returnees. GHIII went predominantly with FR. I don't think it is a stretch to say, if Hodgson had UB's roster, they would not have been beating App St in semi's and and if UB had Ark St roster, the results would likely have been better than we saw. So what about next year - assuming Ark St does not have any transfers - they will be returning a good core, plus they added some FR this year. If (a big if) GHII keeps the most of the FR for four years - perhaps they could be very good. Time will tell. I feel like you have to blend in transfers - maybe focus mostly on JR / SO transfers.

Hard to argue with the PG on the top team winning I guess. Here’s hoping Watson stays for one more season and leads the Bulls to the top of the MAC next year.

Lowest ranked MAC teams and what their freshmen did in their careers: 2022 - WMU (#329). Josiah Freeman playing D2. Owen Lobsinger junior on the #7 team in the MAC. Gus Etchison playing NAIA. 2021 - NIU (#337) had no freshmen contributors 2020 - WMU (#237). B Artis White, Titus Wright seniors on the #7 team in the MAC. Chase Barrs senior barely playing on a terrible Florida A&M team 2019 - WMU (#255). William Boyer-Richard finished his career at a school in Canada. Patrick Emilien transferred twice. 2018 - Akron (#255). Virshon Cotton transferred 3 times. Eric Parrish transferred twice. Torrey Patton transferred and contributed to some good Cleveland St. teams in the Horizon. Mark Kostelac transferred to a D2 school. Jaden Sayles transferred to Stony Brook. I won't keep going but this isn't viable, not to mention that this team is starting from a worse place than any that I listed above. I think Sabol/Boldin/Wilson could be contributors on the next good UB team. I do not think they will be stars on the next good UB team. It's not the end of the world if we lose any of them. Building in 4 year cycles is not a viable strategy any more. It's not to say that we will not have 4 year players and we shouldn't aim to recruit and develop HS kids, but you can't build a program on a prayer that everyone stays. You need to replace transfers out with equal or better transfers in. We are also no longer above "shortcuts to competitiveness", we suck. We are two coaches and an AD removed from the good teams. This coach has no track record of leading a successful program in any way. It is going to be hard to recruit/retain players to a program coming off 4 wins. It's on the staff to identify underrecruited talent in any shape or size.

My analysis isn’t relevant anymore. Freshman of the Year goes to Kirsten Lewis-Williams!

If they are gonna go hard into NIL, I'm for it 100% Just think with how precious the resources UB always seems to have it might be better suited to look forward to the next thing coming Hopefully they do both!

I have some bad news for you if this is what you want...

Why is it up to SUNY to determine how much we charge our student body for Athletics? Do they have control over that? JMU has one of the highest student fees in the country yet their applications have gone up 78% over the last 3 years and they now have more prospective applicants than UB. As usualy, there were the professionally outraged academia folks complaining about the high fees at JMU but overall the school has become more popular due to the success of their athletics programs. UB should take note. To me it seems we had the perfect opportunity to raise that fee income substantially when we were winning a few years ago. Doing it now would be difficult though.

If I was a betting man, I would expect that the Athletic fees have never really be adjusted for the UB to be a D1 school. Maybe it's a SUNY thing, maybe it's a UB decision, not sure. schools like JMU, etc. obviously made a decision that Athletics was important to the college profile. For the first time ever, they went over 40,000 applications to their school. Athletics is a major component of college life. A friend of my daughter went to Virginia Tech instead of one of 12 other colleges she could have gone to for free because she wanted to go to football games (a stupid decision in my opinion, but it is a real thing these days). I was at UB when we went to D1. There was a little rumble, I religiously attended football, MBB, WBB, volleyball, wrestling etc. in the early days. However, in my opinion, it was not touted as the big deal it really was and felt like we missed out on that moment and things just rolled along from there. 20 years later we became pretty good and had some really nice success. Now we are back at the bottom of the bell curve. UB Administration has done a very poor job getting excitement, they couldn't even get quality gear for students and fans to buy or a way to buy online or anything for a long time, mindboggling.

My tuition was $750.00 per year (not semester) when I started. Including room and board, it was still cheaper than what my parents paid per year for 7th and 8th grade for me.

Oh it gets better. Students of families (in state) that make a household income less than $125,000 pay $0.00 in tuition. The only thing I’ve had to pay is meal plan (first 2 years), dorm (first 2 years), and fees. Graduating in 10 weeks, over the course of my 3 years (came in with AP credits and such) I’ll have paid approximately 30,000 for everything. About 25,000 of that would be room and board, as Ellicott was about 9,000 and Greiner about 10,000. This entire year (not including off campus rent) I’ll have paid the school around 2,500. It really is a steal.

UB students are going to oppose any sort of fee increase, especially one that would increase fees to our football program. Grad students especially would also oppose the athletic fee, which I can completely understand. Grad students also don't get admission to athletic events. JMU is a bit of a party school and doesn't exactly have an academic reputation. I didn't realize until after I graduated how much of UB is subsidized, whether by taxpayers or donors. Tuition is $3,535 a semester, which is an absolute steal especially compared to our academic regional (non-SUNY) peers for in-state tuition. UB $3,535 UMass Amherst $8,295.50 (includes athletics fee) UConn Storrs $8,505 Rutgers NB $6,837 Penn State UP $9,836 Yet you can go on the UB subreddit and find a bunch of undergrads that will complain about the cost of tuition being too high. The ROI if you don't get a meal plan and live off campus is absurd.

I along with our family and many fans do totally agree. We went from Hurley to Oats who was a high school coach and learned from Hurley and we could of kept all that momentum going with another up and comer coach in Hodgson who as the successful years came began more outspoken and comfortable on the sidelines not withstanding he had a successful recruiting record and was well known in recruiting circles. Again a local guy who we talked to many times who seemed to be engaged and genuine with fans. Whitesell was a good assistant coach and a really nice guy and now he is a happy camper at Albany in the slot that is good for him. Again with the culture and chaos now in college basketball the power conferences will continue to succeed with their millions of dollars and who knows where the mid majors will end up.