rma

1 hour ago, BrooklynBull said:

Because this is what matters!
https://ubbulls.com/news/2023/12/11/athlete-academic-affairs-ub-athletics-posts-highest-graduation-rate-in-program-history.aspx

Congratulations to Danny White and Allen Greene! Still paying dividends to UB years later

Do we see Graham for the Richmond game now?

3 minutes ago, RapidsFan said:

If UB wanted any chance of similar funding for a new stadium, they would have partnered with the Bills and lobbied for either a domed stadium downtown or at UB North.

Well our disgraced ex-governor killed that. UB was open to it. I did not like it (ever been to a Temple game?), but it makes more sense than Orchard Park. Orchard Park is in the middle of the snow belt, less central for the WNY population, very little public transportation, and not a lot of highways which makes entrance and exit awful. As much as I hate the idea of people jumping through flaming tables on the campus of a university with an exceptional reputation on Sundays, it's better than parking lots in Orchard Park being empty 350 days of the year.

4 minutes ago, RapidsFan said:

Could have similarly got public funding for a Metro Rail extension to UB North/airport/etc.

I hope that someday my (future) grandkids will be able to attend the grand opening of the metrorail expansion that costs $100 billion and 50 years from shovel in the ground to train running through.

1 hour ago, RapidsFan said:

So why not just get rid of football and increase the basketball budget

In theory you could do that, but in reality you have to find a new conference and add/change sports to comply with that conference's membership requirements. Schools that axe football also don't just give that money over to the other programs. When UB cut four sports in 2016 the school just lowered the subsidy given to athletics, and did not allocate that money to the other sports. UAB, after shutting down football in 2014 in a political hit job, reversed course and reinstated the football program despite the school's large subsidy to athletics.

I went into detail here looking at other schools' decision to drop to FCS or drop football entirely. The end result is unless your team is bankrolled by Charles Koch your basketball program is not going to be more successful and will likely be less successful.

On 12/9/2023 at 2:16 PM, UBinMD said:

I think we need a better product on the field before we talk about tracks and scoreboards. Let’s actually win something. 

Since the stadium was built we went from FCS to FBS. Since the scoreboard was installed we won a conference championship, multiple division championships, had a first round NFL pick, had a running back nearly break the single game yards record, and a top 25 finish. We shouldn’t be punting on improving the stadium to at least a low level FBS experience because Mo Linguist can’t hire a competent offensive coordinator.

ETA: Waiting for success to improve facilities is one of the reasons Nate Oats isn’t still here (outside of the whole multi-millions of dollars). Oats says I want a dedicated practice facility. Great! We have the triple gym which is much better than any other MAC facility. But you need a rec center for the students. Between university and/or SUNY bureaucracy it is 4 years later and last I checked there’s no student rec center being built. In fact, UB health services just opened up an office off north campus recently which makes me think this is not a priority for anybody right now. 

34 minutes ago, Bluebird96 said:

In football it’s so hard to compete with the P5 (or 6 or whatever) conferences, and with our difficulty in drawing even 15,000 fans to games, in all reality it seems unlikely any of them will ever come calling.

Albany had an unbelievable turnaround from last year to this year and hosted a home playoff game. The stands were empty. If UB were to stupidly drop to FCS they might as well just play at Kunz because even less people will show up.

1 minute ago, Fedup said:

Face it. UB athletic program is broken and unfixable. What should be done?: 1. Fire Allnuts. 2. Go down to Div III in bball. Great rivalry will ensue with Buff St. and Fredonia. 3. Discontinue football. No more Mo will be awesome. As a taxpayer, I resent my tax dollars being wasted on this joke.

Go away troll.

37 minutes ago, UBlearns said:

Oats was a HS head coach for 12 years, and took his team to the state semis 4 of those 12 years.

Hurley had no head coaching experience but had a tremendous basketball pedigree (2-time national champion, famous household name in college basketball circles, top-10 NBA draft pick, son of a legendary basketball coach / brother of a successful basketball coach) that few can match.

Halcovage is learning on-the-job, compared to the other two, and it shows.

(for the record I'm not sure if this is me agreeing or disagreeing with your overall point, just answering the question)

All three were "up and coming" with either no head coaching experience or no D1 experience.

GH3 was on a national championship team his first year as an assistant and spent 15 years on the staff of a Hall of Fame coach. His resume as a coach was no better or worse than Oats, Hurley, or even Witherspoon at the time of hire.

2 hours ago, UB92 said:

1.   GH3 started at Villanova in 2008, but didn't get into a coaching position (at least according to Wikipedia) till 2017.
2.   When Jay Wright left, GH3 didn't get the head coach job, but stayed on for another year till he left to join UB.  As far as I can tell, GH3 has no head coaching experience at any level.

How does this compare to the resume of Bobby Hurley or Nate Oats before they were hired here?

1 hour ago, UB92 said:

I wholeheartedly disagree that this forum is "toxic", by the way.  Just long standing fans, supporters, boosters, alumni, etc., communicating their thoughts and opinions about the game, team, etc.   What would be much, much worse is that if the game thread wasn't started or that no one bothered to talk about it.

Completely agree.

When we retire his #46 officially, will it be painted on the track or.....

2 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

The Lamonte Bearden Memorial Game.

Tipoff is actually at 4:20pm

1 hour ago, ChubbyHubby said:

SGBull, you mention the "football game day experience".  Talk about regressing.  WTF was that Coca Cola thing that we got this year.  It was a joke.  I imagine the Stampede Square concerts of the past bunch of years were too expensive, but people partied and enjoyed themselves.  

I liked the idea of the big screen with ESPN on, but the location of it made no sense.

8 hours ago, UB92 said:

Here is a surprising article.  
 

https://www.sportskeeda.com/college-football/cole-snyder-transfer-portal-5-potential-landing-spots-buffalo-qb-feat-florida-state-indiana

I initially thought that article was written by AI, but all the AI detection sites said it was human written. I don't know any human that would think Cole Snyder would start at Florida State so I'm going with really good AI.

Could be the second SUNY -> SUNY QB transfer for UB if he goes to SUNY Syracuse.

On 11/25/2023 at 3:41 PM, rma said:

This year during the first couple football games we tried something new and innovative by having a shout from both sides of the stadium (think WE ARE! PENN STATE! or LET'S GO! MOUNTAINEERS!) but it's clear that both whoever planned that and the PA announcer had never experienced something like that. The PA announcer said all three sides of it multiple times-so nobody knew if you were supposed to say what he was saying or say it afterwards. And "Go Blue, Go White, Go Bulls!" is much harder to execute than "Let's Go! Buffalo!"

Sorry to go a little bit off topic here but this was tried again at the Bonaventure game, modified to be “Go Blue” “Go White”. It went slightly better, considering one of the DJ’s was leading it, but was still pretty rough. I was very worried that it was going to turn into a SBU chant considering it’s quite a decision to try something new with opposing fans around. But alas neither team had much to cheer for during that game outside of some poster dunks and a rivalry (disputed?) win. 
 

Suggestion if anybody reading this is in charge of anything…coordinate with the cheerleaders. Announce beforehand that “We need your help, Alumni Arena! Watch the cheerleaders to cheer on your Bulls!” then don’t try to say anything and let the crowd take over  

See how the cheerleaders show the signs and move them to indicate when to say the words? And they don’t have anybody over the PA to cause ambiguity? Now this is making me wish I went back down to Virginia Tech this year.

22 minutes ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

I responded above to this post already but I think you’re oversimplifying my point and coming to an incorrect conclusion. You can be patient with a coach while still making a change above them. It’s not normal but the SUNY system doesn’t operate athletics like most state university systems.

Do you want Tripathi in charge of hiring a new AD, or would you take the field? 

Tripathi is 72, almost 73. As of 2016, only 11% of university presidents were 70+. 
 

I think the immediate future for the athletic program is not amazing (unless you are a volleyball/soccer fan) until there’s clarity about who is running the school in the future.

I don’t trust Alnutt to make future hires. I don’t trust Tripathi to make a good AD hire. There’s no vision for the athletics program that the school had under Bill Greiner. White (who was a Tripathi hire) had a vision but little institutional/community support, and more bitching from the local columnists than support for a flagship athletics program vision. Remember when UB made the big dance for the first time *ever* and all that was in the news was the NYBI logo?
 

Oats had a vision of success but did not get the support from the school (see: lack of student rec center years later). Both have moved on.

Wonder what Danny White thinks of Jerry “women can’t have opinions about football” Sullivan these days. Probably doesn’t think much about him….

46 minutes ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

Title of the thread answers that question.

So he made the wrong hire, or should have told his basketball coach to recruit a point guard and a guy that can play center/forward? 
 

He fired the guy everyone wanted him to fire. UB basketball is rebuilding but it’s too early to say Alnutt made a bad hire here, which seems to be the implication. There’s enough working against MA to say he likely will not be here longer than his contract without poor basketball results. 
 

ETA: The guy a lot of people (including me) had at/near the top of their list is #280 in the NET with a better roster. 

Under the new rules (assuming the tiebreakers are broken in logical ways) we would have made the MAC Championship game last year.

I really don’t think there’s going to be much of a difference in competitiveness of the game. Any given Saturday (or Tuesday, Wednesday, etc)…remember 2008?

7 minutes ago, Blue03 said:

I wouldn’t be celebrating this like the biggest rival win ever

A lot of their fans don't consider UB as a rival. They consider Niagara and Canisius as rivals because they've had longer history with those schools. Unfortunately for them, they're 0-3 this year against those two schools in basketball this year, with a men's basketball game against Niagara their only chance to avoid the sweep. To be fair their women's basketball team is in a complete rebuild as well, and lost one of their important freshman commitments to UB.

I appreciate their dedication to men's basketball though. Mark Schmidt is being paid somewhere around $1.8 million per year now, and their next highest paid coach (as of 2021, latest data available) is their now-fired women's basketball coach who made ~$182k. Schmidt makes 6x what their (2021 interim) university president did (UB comparison: $800k Tripathi, $675k Linguist, $425k GH3, $250k Burke). Pretty much all of their school's athletic resources go to men's basketball and yet they've had similar recent (i.e. post 1970's) success as UB in terms of making the NCAA tournament and winning conference championships. Head to head in the non-men's basketball sports that both schools compete in, you'd find the "rivalry" is pretty lopsided, especially in recent years.

I applaud the Bonnies in their win. They've invested so much into that program that it's good to see their money hasn't been completely wasted.

29 minutes ago, enrique14150 said:

Except I got to my seat (usually all the people around us are fellow season ticket holders), and two Bona guys were in front of me. 

Some Bonnies fans sat in the seats next to me where the STHs that normally sit there have had those seats for a decade. STHs got there a little late and shooed the Bonnies off to the 300's where they belong.

Lack of students there sucked, especially for a student tee shirt giveaway day. Some aspects of in arena production seems to have gone downhill. Mics off, media timeouts completely mishandled. I do appreciate the ability to use a credit card at the concession stands and see replays on our video board.

6 minutes ago, MKBullsfan said:

I must have missed the reason, but why is Adams not playing? Injury?

Yes, injured.

18 hours ago, UBinMD said:

2022 (Georgia Southern): 371/604 = 61.4%; 4,253 yards, 27 TD/16 INT; 6 sacks

Basically he has 127 yards less in 2022 that his entire UB Career. He had 4 more TDs than his entire UB Career, he had 5 more INT than his entire UB Career.

This is true but missing context. Southern runs the air raid offense and only rushed for 137 yards per game last year. This year their QBs combined for 3,579 yards passing (12 games), last year it was 4,289 (13 games). Did he have a great season and one better than he had at UB, absolutely. Can you compare his passing stats 1:1 with his time at UB? Not completely. 

49 minutes ago, promotherobot said:

There are 150 other FCS school C-USA would look at before Buffalo.

They should know by now that we aren’t interested.

43 minutes ago, Lineman67 said:

 

He will be in Portal

Sit 1 play 1?