trueblue32

The reason I personally want to move to a different conference is it just raises the floor of the athletic department. The number of G5 schools that have had sustained success in FBS football OR basketball is small. The number of G5 schools that have had sustained success in FBS football AND basketball is smaller. The number of G5 schools that have had sustained success in FBS football AND basketball on MAC exposure/budget/fan support is 0. It's a nice theoretical to say let's just hang around the MAC and dominate until the end of time but UB isn't the first MAC school to have a string of successful seasons, and all of those other "dynasties" have since ended. There are several things that lead to success, but recruiting is king. Recruits are interested in fan support, facilities (budget), exposure, and success. Obviously these things are all tied together, and moving to a better conference automatically raises the first three, and should in turn raise the fourth. It takes one bad hire to torpedo UB's image of success in the mind of a 17 year old recruit and then we're left with really nothing exceptional in the fan support, facilities (budget), and exposure categories. The issue for us is there's not really a strong group of regional G5 teams, with Temple and UMass pretty much being the only options without pushing further south. I would have hoped we would have gotten in the AAC as there's really not much potential for UB to move up without P5 conferences completely blowing up, and us ending up in a completely new conference with the leftovers: Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, BC, etc.

I disagree, KenPom Tier A/B games serve as a decent proxy for Q1/Q2 games on an NCAA resume. We have 2 A tier and 2 B tier games as of now with the potential of playing Saint Louis as a likely B tier, possible A tier game. We also have two spots still open on the schedule. It lacks the P5 names but that’s the price of recent success. This is the best schedule imo we’ve been able to put together since we were Top 25. I also think the UC Irvine and the return WKU games are the most interesting home games (non-con/non-Big4) since probably South Dakota St in 2014

Was looking at my football tix and saw this listed as well. WBB has an exhibition against Daemen on 11/4, and MBB (presumably) had an un-announced exhibition that day as well. Went to the Daemen MBB schedule to see if it was against them and they do have the exhibition listed

Kenpom's preseason projections. Has us slipping to the 13th best conference, thanks to a particularly bad bottom of the conference this season. Huge drop off from Kent at 143 to Ball at 260

Yeah looks like his recruitment is taking off. Hopefully being in first means something

Kid has a 40" vert and shot 57% from 3 on a top 10 HS team and he had no D1 offers, that's wild. Reminds me of James Reese in that he's a good athlete/shooter but doesn't appear to do much off the dribble. It's good to get in as his first offer, I'd imagine he piles them up in JUCO

There's the first 3 games anyway

Reading Blue Ribbon Yearbook's Buffalo summary and here's some quotes that jumped out to me from Whitesell that give an idea of what some of the guys roles will be this year: On David Skogman “I think Skogman has great potential. This summer, he really made a jump. He’s much more confident. He can shoot the 3. He's got an opportunity to play heavy minutes with a chance to start.” On Kuluel Mading: "He's thin, but he's got a great upside. He can really run. He's more of a tall three than anything.” On Kidtrell Blocker: "He's got a lot of talent, he's got good potential, but he's a little bit behind because he missed a month of the summer” On Zaakir Williamson "He's a five/four, wide-body kid. We've got a lot of good depth inside, so it's a luxury for him to be able to take our time and develop him. He can get extra reps in practice -kind of what we did with David Skogman a couple years back.” He also mentions Brewton providing a spark off the bench, so presumably Jack will be starting with Skogman as an option for a bigger starting lineup.

7 months ago he released a top 5 with 4 HM and UB (we originally offered over 3 years ago), then he goes off the map and pops up at BG. Let's apply some common sense here. His recruiting pedigree has continually dropped too starting at 84 in February 2020 and currently sitting at 201 https://247sports.com/PlayerSport/Willie-Lightfoot-at-Sunrise-Christian-256369/RecruitRankHistory/

I don't have any inside info, but I feel pretty confidently that he doesn't have a committable offer from us anymore. Hasn't been any news on him visiting UB after being in his top 5 and our first commit in the class was at the same position. Seems like his recruitment his fallen off after early offers from Minnesota, Oregon, Alabama, Marquette, and us.

This is an exciting set of games

When I went to the UB-Temple game at the Eagles stadium a few years back it was not a great turnout compounded by being so spread out in a big stadium. Also very little student turnout for them

Yeah I mean I don’t think we’re a favorite to be invited due to the American being a southern conference at this point minus temple but no team in the MWC is leaving to join the American at this point. Additionally no conference with an AAU school and multiple R1 schools is allowing the sham that is Liberty to join. That guy is throwing shit at a wall as much as any of us

I compiled average Massey rankings of MAC, AAC, and potential AAC additions since the start of 2017. Even if Memphis and Wichita State leave, the remaining AAC teams + us and 3 other top potential additions creates a conference that is a significant step up. Have Alnutt on a flight from Lincoln to Dallas tomorrow to get us in. I have no allegiance to B-tier Ohio public schools

I tend to think concerns about free throw shooting in this forum are overblown. I'd say rarely is it a top 5 cause of losing a game. This is obviously an inexact science as you can argue that making more free throws leads to a butterfly effect of changes to in-game strategy at the end of a game, and teams don't really ever shoot their exact average, but to illustrate: Just changing the FT% from last year's bad FT shooting team to an average FT shooting team flips the result of one game. Using next year's projected number from above also flips the result of one game, and becoming the best FT shooting team in the country from last year (Oral Roberts), flips the result of two games. Obviously improving FT shooting in combination with other factors can flip more results and that's the hope for next year. I just feel that it's a number that's latched onto disproportionately (particularly in post game threads) relative to its impact on outcomes Edit: I'll also add that getting to the FT line is probably just as important as making the shots when you're there and Graves/Nickelberry did so at a higher rate than Jack/Perry. They're different types of players so that's fine, but it should be considered in the context. Even with Graves' struggles at the line he averaged 1.15 pts per 2 shot trip. While the team averaged 1.02 pts/FGA, and 1.07 pts/possesion so a Graves trip to the line was a relatively efficient outcome for a UB possession.

My thought is Boals is gone after this year (see: Oats winning an NCAAT game, running it back with mostly the same team, and then bolting). Convincing Hadaway to come then without ever stepping on campus is a different discussion. He's more akin to James Rojas, Andre Allen, Raymond Hawkins than Williams in that regard, but that's all conjecture.

Who Ohio lands only really matters if you think Jeff Boals will be at Ohio for long, which I personally do not. Williams was ranked #130 and became an all-conference level player his junior year. Lets see if Boals is in the MAC in 2025

To be honest I think we're in a pretty good spot for the portal. We haven't had a major loss there since Bearden, and we've had several significant contributors come in since then. Being a top mid-major theoretically gives us a shot to pick from some good down transfers, while also retaining the Segus and Williams because we're still winning and they arguably get just as big of a spotlight as they would as a role player at a high major. I understand frustration with some of Whitesell's shortcomings, but he seems to continue a culture that players aren't choosing to leave while also succeeding at bringing in more high level talent. You can argue what the ceiling is with Whitesell but I feel he brings a high floor to the program, which I value highly with a re-shuffling of the conference decks on the horizon (which if things break right could raise our ceiling for us). Now is not the time for the program to fall off of the map, and hopefully Linguist can do the same for the football program.

Yes the Bona fan came in here to troll us on wanting to go to the Big 10, which I think most realize is a pipe dream. I think the realistic hope for us is that things get shaken up enough that we end up in a new conference (or a conference that got ransacked by movement), with top G5 schools or P5 schools that got left behind. The 4 end goals for me would be: -Still a semi-regional geographic footprint -The conference has schools in larger markets than the Oxfords and Athens we currently have -The conference perennially gets multiple bids to the NCAA tournament -The conference perennially has multiple top 25 FBS teams Some schools that would ideally fit that imo are Temple, UMass, Cincinnati, Army, Navy, Rutgers, Toledo, Marshall. Then push farther south or west to pick up teams to round out the conference. There are some obvious weak links here (UMass football, Army/Navy basketball), but I think becoming something of a G5 super conference would "lift all boats" and put us around the caliber of the Mountain West and American currently which would meet my goals.

Got a lot of free time with your team bounced from the TBT years ago. At least you have football season to look forward to now

Moss out for us tonight and Rion Brown and Durand Scott out for Category 5. Team Ranks: Brown: 1st in PPG, 1st in RPG, 2nd in APG Scott: 4th in PPG, 4th in RPG, 3rd in APG Leaves them with 6 guys who have played in the tournament. The two guys who haven't played yet were both last seen playing in the NCAA where Deivydas Kuzavas averaged 3.1/3.0/0.3 at St. Francis (PA) and Decardo Day averaged 3.5/3.1/1.3 at Alabama State

I sold him on our ability to sell out Alumni Arena (I read an article where they wanted Key Bank Center, which feels like it's shooting too high to be honest). I think if the marketing is there it could definitely be attainable based on interest in the team when they were top 25, but I don't know what they do in the way of local marketing. I didn't watch the games that weren't in our sessions, but it seemed Ohio State nearly packed the arena and Dayton had a good showing. Xavier was loud, but they frankly didn't bring a huge crowd, packed the bleachers on one side for game #1, but not many people for the Sunday night game. The Ohio Bobcat fans could be counted on one hand. Either way with us, Bona, and Syracuse anchoring a region I think we would be pretty capable of outdoing the attendance I saw in Columbus.