dutchcountry7

12 hours ago, UBminicre said:

Interestingly, Ole Miss beat Memphis and Memphis beat WKU.

Either way, glad they won. Helps us out. 

It's almost like these are college kids who have good and bad days and that basketball is a game of matchups with different teams perform differently against different teams depending on those matchups and how the kids do on any given day. 

1 hour ago, MKBullsfan said:

 

At St. John Fisher’s high school gym, where else do you think it will be….?

We rented Key Bank, right?

1 hour ago, clodney said:

I haven't heard a single Buffalo person claim we should move to CUSA ever since the conference lost 9 members. I also don't think WKU would be looking at the MAC had those 9 members still been around. We are merely a life raft of stability.

Yup.  

A lot of UB fans liked the idea of being in a conference where they were in a division with UAB, Charlotte, Marshall, Old Dominion, WKU, and MTSU.

A lot fewer (any?) are interested in being in a conference with Sam Houston State, Jacksonville (Alabama) State, UTEP, New Mexico State, Florida International, Liberty, MTSU, and WKU.

1 hour ago, Gxtrex said:

Do net rankings count games vs non D1 opponents?

Non-D1 games are not factored into the NET math.  The games do count as official wins (or losses).   This is one of the reasons teams have preferred to play non-D1 games.  A team like Daemen is better than a lot of the low level D1 teams.  So play them and your team will be pushed.  Play a low level D1 team and you can be penalized for playing a close game even though you win it.

1 hour ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

Another question would be: Why did they go out and pay for a search firm that recommended coaches most likely demanding $500,000+ a year instead of hiring their internal candidate that they could’ve extended right away if that was truly the direction they wanted, could afford and would keep the team together?

The feedback from the market was not what Bulls fans think it is.  The job isn’t as prized as we think it would be. As a result the coaches were higher risk and at the same time the meetings with players made clear who they wanted.  

1 hour ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

A successful athletics department doesn’t just run the programs at a school. The best are also great at raising money.

Alnutt has been able to do that for football. The question is, was he successful at capitalizing off of basketball’s success following their Top 25 season?

This is where Whitesell and all of this enters the equation. If he’s all that they could afford, that means they barely elevated themselves from a budget perspective following four NCAA Tournament seasons in 5 years which seems hard to believe. If that is the case, fine but then you’d have to question how they weren’t able to raise more money for basketball after increasing community interest.

Truth is, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Maybe, UB takes off again this year in MAC play and Whitesell brings them back or maybe they’ll flop and we’ll be saying “what if” but we’ll all be pointing to the day Whitesell was hired as the turning point of the program.

 

You seem to be under the assumption that each sport is a silo with their own boosters, revenue, and budgets.  

That is not accurate. 

Each sport has an allocated annual budget and within that manages their own expenses.  

At a higher level, the athletic department manages each sport, overall fundraising, management of resource allocation based on changes in year to year needs, and overall revenue. 

Most sports are going to the same well for funding. You see the same top donors giving to women’s basketball, football, etc.   It is the job of the athletic department leadership to prioritize the focus of these fundraising initiatives to best ensure that the overall athletic department is successful and moves forward toward their goals. 

When we had a coach that the market was willing to pay 10x what we were paying because he produced a top-20 level team, it made sense to allocate resources to that.  But that was not intended to be the focus.  The focus at the time was infrastructure like the football field house.  The admin pivoted because we found ourself with something else that could be a better short term investment that could lead to even more future progress for the athletic department as a whole. 

It didn’t make sense to ask the donors that were willing to fund the old staff and ask them to fund a multi-year contract for an unknown coach who we didn’t know would work out.  

When we lost that “pleasant surprise” of the old staff the wise thing to do was stay the course.  

The football field house still needs more funding.  The financing weighs on the athletic department budget and it prevents the athletic department from having flexibility in their scheduling and to be nimble due to a lack of financial flexibility.  

What the overall athletic department needed (and still needs) is stability without a drop off.  Big declines in athletic performance due to rebuilds caused by coaches leaving and players leaving set athletic departments back significantly.  

We are not in a position to be able to buy out a coach for a poor performance.  No one thinks they will hire a coach that fails. 

The very real possibility was that we made the investment into hiring a new coach funded not by actual athletic department revenue but by short term donor funding—like we were planning to do with the old staff—and we are left paying $600,000 a year for a coach, who regresses as players transfer out, then he has to bring in his own players to fit his own system and by year five we have a coach with two winning seasons.  Or even worse we have fans on here asking why we aren’t buying out the contract to fire the coach for taking our great program and running it into the ground. 

That is a common midmajor coach getting poached scenario that plays out. 

And if that happens we lose the trust of the donors.  We took their money, gave it to an employee who didn’t deliver and have nothing to show for it.  

If we could keep the old staff for that money then it made sense to spend the money to keep the winning program in place.  That was a low risk move. 

But if there was going to be a complete change in the program then it didn’t make sense to use the limited donor resources on a high risk gamble.  It made much more sense to invest into things like infrastructure that will benefit the athletic program as a whole and will persist for years to come no matter what personnel are in place.  

People don’t realize how little revenue came in and continued to come in from the 2019 run.  

8 hours ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

Nate Oats signed an extension with UB worth $831,000 per year.

That extension was contingent on fundraising to cover a portion of the increase through an incentive.

It was to signal a commitment to the coach but was not guaranteed.
 

Do you think the athletic department has the money and is simply choosing not to spend it to be successful?   That seems to be your claim. 

1 hour ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

I think Jim Whitesell has had a disappointing tenure *so far* as UB head coach but still think he can fix the ship. What makes it incredibly hard to judge him is that he's off to one of the best starts by any coach in program history but replacing the best head coach Buffalo has ever had.

So the question is, do we judge him based on UB's historical precedent (which he'd be doing great) or by where the program was when he took over? (obvious regression) Then you have to factor in that he took over a re-building roster but had two of their highest recruits of all-time.

That's why opinions are all over the board. With what he inherited and the transfers he brought in, anything short of an NCAA Tournament appearance this year would have to be considered a disappointment based on his two predecessors instant success coaching the Bulls.

They don't even need to be a high seed. Just get in and be somewhat competitive and that'll buy him good will with the fanbase. The worst case scenario is if they fail to make the MAC Finals and he's forced to deal with another rebuilding project next year. Then, the momentum from Oats will officially be gone and they'll need to figure things out.

What isn't mentioned here is that the last two coaches have worked out and jumped to bigger jobs.  Every time there is a coaching change there is a lot of turmoil and typically a set back.  

People here are complaining about not Whitesell not being Oats.  But we can't afford an Oats.  So what do we expect?  Top-100 teams is a reasonable target for the program.  NCAA bids is reasonable.  But complaining that your coach isn't some other elite coach doesn't make any sense.  

The players wanted Whitesell hired.  This is the modern transfer era where players bolt every year to a new program.  They all stayed because he was their guy.  People like to talk about the young kid that brought the recruits in but these recruits were committed to Whitesell which is why they are still here after those other guys left.

Going outside and making a new hire was a risky proposition and not one guaranteed to pay off.  

We need stability and a dependably strong program.  That is what gets you midmajor respect and gets you better games.  When teams know that you will always be a top-100 team they will schedule you.  But if they think your coach is about to be hired away you're not getting games.

People forget that Oats couldn't land home/home series--not even with midmajors.   We had to play Southern Illinois in a in-season home/home because no one believed that Oats would be there the next year.  When they tried to schedule games all teams heard was "Come to Buffalo and play our top-20 team and then next year after I leave and all our players transfer out we will send a rebuilding sub 200 team to your place."  No one wanted to schedule that.

And we did not have that regression.  The teams that believed Oats was on his way out were right.  They were right not to schedule us.  The teams that believed the team would fall off were wrong because we had a mentor for the players that they wanted to play for.  They didn't bolt to other programs like you see at programs all around the country.

The program is in a good spot. 

It is asinine to me that people compare the previous coach to the current coach.  One is being paid 10x the other for a reason. 

I don't believe in gambling to try to find the rare next top coach and have him lead the program for five years until their are poaches away and the cycle starts again.  Hiring involves too much risk to want to gamble like that.  If we are a dependable top-100 program knocking on the door of the NCAA every year then we are establishing a program that when the time comes for a coaching change we will have a lot of talented applicants with an established fan base, history of good scheduling, and long track record of success.

I want the program to be in a great spot in 10 or 20 years.  I don't want us to be talking about the coaches that have left us and in another rebuild. 

The MAC, CUSA, and MWC all petitioned the NCAA to create an additional one time bowl game so that they wouldn’t potentially have to leave out a bowl eligible team. 
 

Hawaii and a team from either CUSA or the MAC was going to be left out.

The petition was granted and a new bowl game was born.  
 

This year all bowl eligible teams will be in a bowl game. 

20 minutes ago, DocCas86 said:

First here is a composite rank of what I view are very reliable ranking sites:

As you can see, we still are viewed as the best team in MAC.  However, the separation between us and the other top six teams is small, suggesting a lower expected probability of winning the MAC which everyone on the team, the coaches and all of us fans agree is the goal.  The hope is that UB improves upon current ranking of roughly 90, which is competitive in the MAC, to a higher ranking (my range was 60-70).  Going 4-0 for remainder of OOC, including wins against WKU and UCI would move us in that direction.  

What I have been saying - which I have some resistance to - if they are ranked in 60s as per my expectation - probability of winning MAC with good Ohio and Toledo teams is going to be roughly 30-35%.  That is why I stop short of saying we need a new coach in that circumstance.  A ranking of 60 is pretty darn good even compared to recent years.  My opinion is I don't think there are many coaches that could do significantly better than 60 with this team (my estimate with Oats is this team would be around 40).  However, I do think there are coaches that can do better than 90-100 with this team.   I am not going to complain about the folks that add critical comments about coach.  However, I will admit any loss this team has - the fanboard is much worse than the loss itself.  Ok I will complain about the comments, a little 😉

 

The difference between 90 and 60 is less than 3 points.   The difference between 60 and 30 is 5 points (using KenPom data).  
 

There are many teams of similar abilities in the NIT/NCAA Bubble range.  That’s where we are.  
 

Be careful about thinking that the ranking dictates the odds of winning the MAC tournament.   That really comes down to if the team has a good week or not.  One bad game by even a great team and there isn’t a MAC championship.  

11 hours ago, 121Merrimac said:

Only 20 DI teams are mediocre?   Less than 10%, that’s crazy.  I wonder how 1-79, and 101-~330 are described.  
 

Based on my experience on this board…

1-79 are national title contenders.

101-350 should just go D3 because they are a disaster.  
 

Of course that is absurd.  150 teams are solid and regularly knock off top-50 teams throughout the season.  
 

I find it interesting how people seem to forget that we lost MAC games with our greatest team ever.  
 

Everyone likes to pretend that the 2019 season should be the norm.  The year when we finished #22 in KenPom.  And every loss we have this year is treated as an embarrassment that would have never happened under the old staff.  
 

Except for the 2019 losses to Northern Illinois and Bowling Green that we had in 2019 seem to be forgotten. 
 

BG finished #105 with losses to Hartford and Cleveland State.

NIU finished #136 and had a losing record in MAC play. 
 

Good teams lose games to top-100 teams.  Just last night #19 Florida was crushed by #240 Texas Southern.  
 

Sometimes I think people here are really just St. Bona fans trying to stir up trouble. 
 

1 hour ago, MuchMany said:

How's WKU better than SBU without Lofton? 3/4 D1 wins this year are against Alabama St, Alabama A&M, and UT Martin, all in the mid 300s nationally. All their wins are at home. We'll maybe be 2-point favorites there, vs. 4-point dogs vs Bona. Vegas knows much more than you or I.

On the contrary, the North Texas team that we defeated and some diminished as a nothing mid-major, is ranked 88th on BartTorvik, just beat a good Drake team, and stayed with Kansas and Miami (FL). That was a really solid road win for us, which we knew at the time.

You act like they have bad losses.  Their losses are Minnesota, South Carolina, and Memphis.  
 

WKU is expected to be good this year and are performing where they are expected to be performing.  
 

They have won the games they have been expected to win. 
 

Too early to say how good they are but they are going to be a good game. 

They are a good team.  A nice win to get back on track. 

40 minutes ago, promotherobot said:

Oats is being floated as a potential target.

And this impacts UB basketball how?

7 hours ago, UBminicre said:

Played well? What game were you watching? We played well for like 5-8 mins of the entire game. Fagan was the only player on the team that played well. Maybe segu. Williams came alive at end… but he played terrible for 75% of the game. 
 

We are not really good. We are prob an 80-100 ranked team which is a major bust considering the talent and experience on the team. We have the ability to be very good, but we have yet to show any signs in hitting that potential. We can, there is still time… but we better pick it out quickly. Good news is, we just really need to get hot right time during MAC tourney to make noise. 

Nonetheless, you can’t take out your anger on us for pointing out the obvious. No we don’t want to just bitch- we are spending our time on this forum just like you - so obviously we care. We just don’t wear rose color glasses that force us to say we did a great job today or so far this season. Cause we haven’t unless you expected extreme mediocrity.
 

 

 

That’s nonsense. 
 

This game was much like the Michigan game.  st Bona and Michigan aren’t too far apart on the court. But when we lost to Michigan it was all praise about how the team played so close with them on the road and took them to the wire.  Then at St Bona the same thing happens and the players were horrible and the coach needs to be fired.  
 

It’s insane. 

1 minute ago, Chet said:

I pretty sure that the fire Whitesell talk is not just because of today's loss.

MBalla?

I know some have already committed to being anti Whitesell and will use everything as evidence to support their position but we see it with a lot of the comments.  People here are real quick to turn on the team if things don’t go well.  
 

That wasn’t a poor performance by the team.  We all wanted the win and it was within reach.  But the hysteria and attacks on our own just undercut the progress.  
 

Talking about firing a coach for losing a game on the road against one of the top teams in the country?

Asking if Mballa was even there today?

Seriously people   I get that people are annoyed that we are left without a win but the team played well against elite competition.   
 

I don’t understand kicking people while they are down here.

This team is still really good. 

1 hour ago, promotherobot said:

So what? Even if they make it both you get the last shot with a chance to win or tie. All you did was give them a free open shot to win. Stupid.

You do this when you feel like you have a hot shooter and you don’t believe you can get the stop and won’t be able to win in overtime. 

Just now, Erie County said:

How much do we lose by with Lofton? 20? 

I have a feeling we spent the last week preparing for Lofton and then it was switched up on us. 

2 hours ago, DooleyBull06 said:

To my point…why not call Seton Hall and say hey we will come to Jersey and play you guys? Thus eliminating a non D1 game for both schools. 

That’s the issue.  
 

Seton Hall could play a D1 game if they wanted.  
 

They have no problem having teams come play them.  They chose to not play a D1 game.  They are nothing like us. 

Seton Hall is playing D2 Nyack College on FS2 right now.  
 

Every year a few power conference teams play non-D1 games.  
 

Would have been nice if they would have actually filled this date with a D1 team.  

Nice to have Bulls fans putting out segments like this. 

 

11 hours ago, squire17 said:

But UB vs Point Park was televised. (Or is is Park Point?) The point being not many fans would be tuning in to watch that game from either Buffalo or wherever PP is from. This is a rivalry game. I don’t understand why it’s not being televised. UB has alumni all over the place.

Weeknight vs a Saturday?

20 minutes ago, squire17 said:

I wonder why? You would think a lot of fans would like to watch it.

Probably because it doesn't reach more than one media market.