dutchcountry7

Take a look at the Cayman field next year! that has become a good event.

I don’t get this? How it is a job? there are easily 500 former high school basketball players from the Buffalo area that go to auB. You would think they would care and go tot he games...

It doesn’t take long to change the culture of it is a cultural problem because nearly all students are gone in four years. In six years the program has been good there aren’t undergraduate students on campus anymore from the Reggie years. Since there is roughly a 25% turnover of students every year it is pretty quick that you can create a culture. It isn’t ingrained because the students don’t care and the admin never made it a priority. It’s the whole reason they have played so many road games over the years and not invested in building a home game culture. We shouldn’t be shocked that the fans aren’t there when there has been no effort to cultivate the program and make local fans. And everyone that has wanted big games anywhere other than less high profile home games has worked to prevent a fan culture.

Students at UB just don’t care about the basketball team. Or really any of the sports teams. It is slowly getting better as each year the team wins you have some more incoming freshmen that like basketball and start to go to games but there isn’t really a student following like you would expect from the state flagship. It is sad. Someday...

This is the Big one. Beating Bonas would make this a great OOC and show that we can be WNYs team. Just a shame the admin decided to schedule it without students there so they could sell more tickets to Bonas fans. It kills the whole home advantage. Hope True Blue can step up. Right now we are just behind them in Kenpom and falling each day as the preseason rankings are phased out. This win would put the team on the path to winning the MAC and getting a Post season bid.

ASU only got into the NCAA because the Pac 12 is a power conference and if ASU didn't make it last year the Pac 12 would of only had one bid in 2018 and two bids in 2019. They were given credit for beating Pac 12 teams as if they were good even though they weren't any good. The Pac 12 has not been good and that's the only reason ASU has been able to get wins. They are not a good program.

Yeah, KenPom has the top six MAC schools separated by only 4 points. That means the top-half of the conference is expected to be a tossup any time they play. Also, with Bulls dropping in the ranking, we are only one spot above the team in the big game coming up. Looking a lot tougher than expected at the start of the season... There will be no givens the rest of the season. A tough road.

He left for the money and the money hasn't brought success. Maybe he isn't that great of a coach and was just a big name for a MAC school. It is starting too look that way. I like our current staff better anyways.

The money is more valuable. Maybe if the basketball team was looking at at-large bids year after year. But to give up all that money doesn't make sense.

They gave up the $85k guarantee for the basketball game at Purdue and $350k in the guarantee for the football game. A home basketball game with Purdue is absolutely NOT worth $435k. You can buy P5 teams for less than that. LSU and Texas have recently been bought for $250k by VCU. Those schools had to pay an additional $250k in the coaches buyout or they could opt out of that money and play at VCU. Grand Canyon also bought Louisville for around $200k when they wanted to kick off being in D1. Let's not forget that the football team is still struggling to make payments on the fieldhouse because the fundraising hasn't come through and is the whole reason the team has to play all of the guarantee games. They can't afford to take less money.

Ouch! St. Mary's is good but not great. They lost to Winthrop and were taken to the wood shed by Dayton.

No we shouldn’t. Ohio agreed to only take $550k for playing the football game in exchange for having a home and home basketball series. When the deal was struck the going rate for a MAC football team playing at a Big Ten school was $900k. These were other games played that season in the MAC. - Western Mich at USC $1.15M - Akron at Penn State $1M - Buffalo at Minnesota $900k - Bowling Green at Michigan State $900k - Ball State at Illinois $900k - Ohio at Purdue $550k

Would it make you feel better if I had said "that is how we get back on the big stage? Obviously, I know of the past. But it is just that. Sustained success is how you get people to care. It is too easy to be a one hit wonder. Home winning streaks are fine but no one pays attention to them. Can you tell me who currently on the list of the longest home winning streaks? Who is in the top-5 of that list? Since the list is important to you, I would expect you to know that answer. Sure, who doesn't want that every year? Even Wichita State wants that every year and they are pouring Koch money into the program and can't get it every year. I can want that and also talk about reality. There is no path to an at-large bid for this team. The individual bullet points don't matter. Would you find the season to be a success if they beat Army and Dartmouth and lost in Cleveland? The NIT auto-bid is something that I want them to earn and never use. This is all about Cleveland. I want the program to feel comfortable trying new things and changing it up during the non-conference schedule to find what works and what doesn't. I am not concerned that it might result in some additional losses because we are playing for a tournament championship in Cleveland. That's what we have.

I get that people here want to talk about how every game matters but it really doesn't. This is evident by the Army game being the best attended game of the season and only drawing 3,600. No one cares if we finish 3rd in the MAC or 5th in the MAC. This is because no one cares about the MAC. Sure, there are die hard UB fans on here that will claim that the MAC is awesome because the Bulls play in the MAC but we know it doesn't move the needle in Buffalo. People in the Buffalo area and New York state don't care about a finish in the MAC if it isn't a championship finish. We are playing for an NCAA bid. People want to see a MAC dynasty and see NCAA/NIT bids. This team is not getting an at-large bid. So it is all about Cleveland. That is how we get on the big stage. The three games about to be played matter more to people than the MAC games--especially the big one with St. Bona--who is basically ranked even with the Bulls now in all the rankings. We sweep the three local schools and we can remind people that we are the top team in WNY. That means something. But the reality is that this is all about March and getting into the NCAA tournament. That is the only thing that matters.

Again I am reminded, I am so happy with the hire. People don’t realize how much Jim was behind last year’s success. Frankly I would rather have this team than the recruits we had and the old staff. Bama can have them. We have the the guys with class in Buffalo and they are winners.

This game isn’t looking winnable. But neither was Evansville at Kentucky. Either way the only thing that has ever mattered is Cleveland. Win the MAC bid.

The MAC isn't good this year. My projection from before the season remains the same.

Canisius.

Looks like Jacksonville found another way to come up with the money to invest into their basketball program... https://judolphins.com/news/2019/12/3/jacksonville-university-discontinues-football.aspx

What @cheese_66 said. To prevent teams rankings from jumping up and down 50 places based on one game (making the rankings meaningless), the pre-season ranking is factored in an every day the weight of the pre-season ranking is reduced and the actual results only ranking has more weight. Even if there were no games played for any team on a day the rankings would change a little for that day as the pre-season weight is reduced. In January the rankings are purely based on this season's results only. That is actually why our Bulls are so high... You might have noticed we didn't drop a lot when Dartmouth beat us.

Geez that’s an even series!

If you say so...

Ah, got ya. Thanks. That was probably his first year at Canisius, right? They must have been excited by those results right out of the gate.

Is that Reggie’s first win against them?

In another head scratcher Evansville losses to George Washington. They are the basement of the A10. How did Kentucky lose to Evansville?