BullBoy

1 hour ago, Jeseph said:

 

I'm not sure that this game is an obvious draw to casual NCAAM fans (and those outside of this board).

Probably why UB is starting their social media push early

You guys want to blame everyone but our players.  Jim Whitesell did not go 3-of-13 from three point range in the first half.  Players have to make shots... END OF STORY.

We lost on the road to a team in the national rankings in a hostile environment.  And honestly I am envious of their passion.  All our fans want to do is complain about the head coach instead of actually supporting our team.

Do you guys honestly even care about our program or do you just complain for the sake of complaining??

30 minutes ago, MuchMany said:

Is Whitesell the point man on this planning/negotiation? Who else in the athletic department is involved? Curious about it.

While I am sure Whitesell has input, usually there is a designated person on staff whether it be a coach or operations person that does most of the scheduling.

From there, they would have an administrator that oversees men's basketball involved to help with the contract.. No contract can be signed without an administrator,

54 minutes ago, RocChiTown said:

Get rid of UNT and replace them with Va Tech. Use that $ to get South Dakota State. I am very hesitant with agreeing to H&Hs with other mid majors programs. It's so hard to predict what the program will be the next year. Does the coach leave, the best player, do they graduate their best players and return to mediocrity? 

 

You are assuming Va Tech wanted to play us... Very few high majors are buying a mid-major team with 8 seniors who are picked to win their league.

I also understand the buy game argument, but its not fair to ask this group to play the entire non conference schedule on the road. They are already playing 6 of their first 8 away from home 

40 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

In an either or situation I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.  I just find it hard to believe that we couldn’t get anyone, Q3 or 4 to come to Alumni. I understand finances are the reason but don’t we budget in advance. Sounds like we are living paycheck to paycheck, which, if so, is a shame. 

Also imo 20 wins isn’t the standard anymore, for this very reason. Schedule the max number of non D1 games and you can map a road to 20 wins. 

With this administration we budget for one thing... FOOTBALL.

I think a lot of this goes back to our Athletic Director and his unwillingness to understand we should be a basketball school and that is where our success comes from. My guess is most of the 95K from Michigan went to buy more ice for football.  Danny White understood the importance of hoops.  We might not agree with the way he went about things, but he was the only athletic director who saw that potential and that is why we had our biggest successes either with him in charge or thanks to the moves he made..

2 hours ago, RocChiTown said:

Out of curiosity, why did the games with PP and SJFC come about?

Did contracts with other schools fall apart at the last moment?

There are many reasons for this and we have talked about them before.

1. Teams do not want to come to Alumni Arena and play a roster of eight seniors...I bet you we will have no problem finding opponents next year.

2. Money - It's expensive to bring a D-I team in for a buy game.  Probably talking at least $50k...That's a lot of money.. You want better matchups?? Donate to the Blue and White Fund.  My guess is we are paying Point Park and St. John Fisher no more than 10k each.

3. NET Rankings - These games don't impact the NET.  As mentioned we we have enough Q3/Q4 games on our schedule already with the bottom half of the MAC.  Bringing a team to Alumni Arena would only hurt the resume.

I don't think it would be fair to tell this team that have to play every game on the road because no teams are willing to come here. So unfortunately this is where we are at.  The UC-Irvine game is a really god get.  The others are what they are.

Guys this is nothing new having our best big man come off the bench.. His name was Nick Perkins.

Did LaQuill play great on Monday... yeah he was pretty good, but he also had four fouls in less than 18 minutes so you have to pick and choose his minutes.

Brock played eight minutes and Skogman 18 minutes.. So he still played by far the least amount of minutes of anyone.

We get so caught up on who starts a game... we need to make sure our best players are around to finish the game and right now I don't believe LaQuill would be around at the end of the game if he started.  He just fouls way too much.

Would they be coming in as full members or football only?

My concern is that it doesn't really bring anymore money into the conference, but travel budgets are going to go way up... How are teams like volleyball, soccer, tennis and others getting to WKU and MTSU... I just feel like this is going to take a toll on the department with maybe not so much upside.

Interestingly enough, UB and WKU already have a home and home set with WKU coming to Alumni in MBB in 2023... Would be funny if that is now a conference game.

Everyone here is making it seem like this team turned down a bunch of road opportunities to play these non-DI games.  I don't believe that is the case.  The P5 schools don't buy teams like Buffalo because they know there is a chance they could lose them.. A $75K check and a loss isn't a good look when they can go ahead and play CMU or WMU instead and get the win.

As for the home game scenario, it again I think one comes down to money.  A D-I Q4 game probably costs UB about $50k to bring them in.  They can bring a non-D1 in for $5K. And again a home win over a Q4 probably drops you about 15 spots in the NET rankings...The non-D1 doesn't factor in to the NET.

Not sure if everyone has seen this, but the department has partnered with 26 Shirts to produce a Horns Up shirt.  Proceeds will go to help Monika with her ongoing medical expenses

https://26shirts.com/products/ub-volleyball-one4mon

Looks like a Junior College guy:

https://www.nwfraiders.com/sports/mbkb/2021-22/bios/rigsby_brennan_vufk

I did a quick look around the league to see how many non-D1 games teams were playing.  The East surprised me

Akron - 2

BG - 2

Kent - 2

Miami - 3

Ohio - 1

I think this goes to the point that scheduling for teams who are supposed to be good this season like Akron, Kent, BG is very hard.  Akron and Kent are both playing an NAIA school called Point Park that in most years plays 3-4 D1 opponents.

For the West:

Ball State - 1

CMU - 0

EMU - 1

WMU - 3

Toledo -1

NIU - 0

The three schools with new head coaches (CMU, EMU, NIU) playing a total of one non-D1 opponent.  They have a much easier time scheduling because team's don't mind buying those opponents and getting what they consider easy wins.

11 minutes ago, DocCas86 said:

Barttorvik.com uses the D1 docket data to summarize schedules which can be used to get # of OOC games by team.  It is not complete as it does not include TBD games in early season tournaments and missing some Non-D1 games.  Based on this information there are very few options.  As you said only 28 eams left including Buffalo and Ohio.

Correct.. I saw this document: https://d1docket.blogspot.com/p/2021-22-docket-sheet.html

If you take out the MEAC and SWAC teams, which really don't do us any good from a NET standpoint and the teams we are already playing, you are correct in that there are very few options.

Hartford, Merrimack, and Colgate are all intriguing options to me.

12 minutes ago, mikescherrer8 said:

This has got to be the latest the Bulls have been to try and finish the OOC schedule in recent memory. Usually the schedule is set by mid-late September, and here we are almost a week in October and still struggling to finish the schedule. 

My guess is they are trying to exhaust ever D1 option before settling on the second non D1 game. 

I believe the Twitter account is called D1 Docket but they do a good job of schedule announcements and have a website showing what teams still haven’t announced schedules. I think we are about one of 30

16 minutes ago, Kr632 said:

Vantrease is a huge problem. He's been struggling to make very easy throws. He's rarely on time and his accuracy is all over the place. Some balls sail over the receivers head some fall a few yards short. He throws off his back foot in clean pockets. A change needs to be made 

I totally get where everyone is coming from... But I also think a lot of this is our terrible offensive line.. By far the worst line we've had in five years.. Look at how bad Marks has regressed.

4 hours ago, UBlearns said:

This is where I'm at.  Huge regression on offense this season, and I really don't think Vantrease is the problem.  He has done what they've asked him to do all season to date.  I know they lost very important pieces on offense, and you have to expect a step back.  But it's really bad right now.  Maybe Matt Myers is the answer, I don't know, I'm not at practice all week like the coaches are.  But I'm already starting to wonder whether Shane Montgomery is the right guy at the OC position.

I agree with this 100%. The play calling has been awful. We run it up the middle on first and second down and then put KVT in third and long every time. Look what happened in the fourth when they need to score. They let him throw long and he connected on some passes. Between the questionable play calling and the weak o-line, I don’t think the QB is the problem 

2 minutes ago, Tee4three said:

If buffalo and Ohio are having difficulty finding one last solid game, what would stop them from playing each other? Especially in a year they only play once in conference 

It's not a horrible idea, except my guess is the game would have to be in Athens since Ohio already plays here and my guess is UB is looking for a home game since they don't really have any.

When all is said and done, I think it is going to be two non-D1s.

I do think the 22 game schedule is a better idea and then this schedule would be done.

1 hour ago, UBinMD said:

I’m having trouble getting my enthusiasm up for this one. I see they were 11-2 last year before getting stomped by Utica College to end their season. I guess you take what you can get at this point.

Again, I know this is unpopular, but its really the only route to go so this team doesn't have to stay on the road for two straight months.

Look could we bring a team like Coppin State in, probably, but our NET would go down as it would be a Q4 game and we probably have to pay them about $40K more than a non-DI team. 

This makes the most sense from both a NET standpoint and a financial standpoint.

14 minutes ago, DocCas86 said:

 

I think the 2 home games thus far suggest maybe only 1 Non-D1...but that's my opinion/hope.

What do people think it would take for consideration for at large, win 6/7 out of 10 of quad 1/2?

A lot of this is going to depend on how good the MAC is.  The year we were ranked and an at-large shoe in, those road wins at Toledo and Akron were Q1 games. So the league helped us a bit.  We need that again from the rest of the MAC.

12 minutes ago, DocCas86 said:

I like both of these games (potential Quad II).  I am guessing that the last two games to be added to schedule will be of quad 3/4 variety.  With these games here is projection of Quad 1/2 (assuming we earn the right to face St. Louis in Cancun).  While schedule is coming together rather late - I think patience was a virtue in this case.  Looking over other MAC schedules - Ohio's is comparable.  Ohio and Buffalo are clearly top in MAC basketball this year.

 

My guess is they will go the Non-D1 route.  This doesn't affect your NET so really in turn they are better for your at large chances than hosting a Q3/Q4 game.

Fans won't like it, but my guess is any home games from this point out are probably going to be Non-DI.  If the report above is true and teams won't even buy us, we have no chance of starting a home and home in Buffalo.

This is shaping up to be one of our toughest schedules yet.

9 hours ago, HomeyG said:

Did he even dress last season for MBB?

No and I doubt he will this year either having already committed to the cfl. 
 

from what I have heard Dom basically just has an open invite to join the MBB team whenever he wants because he’s such a good teammate and influence on the guys, but it’s a very real possibility that despite him being on the roster he never actually steps foot in Alumni Arena

10 hours ago, ubbulls98 said:

The fact that Justin Moss and Lamonte Beardon are representing UB in this is EVERYTHING that is wrong with sports today.

There is no “representing UB”. The school has nothing to do with this tournament. This was just a team put together to try and win $1 million. If they think Beardon and Moss give them the best chance then that’s what they are going to do. 

18 minutes ago, Jeseph said:

So are we just going without an OL coach?

I believe this was the last position hired and it took a little while for UB to announce the other coaches, who's names we knew way earlier.  I am sure these coaches have to go through background checks and a ton of paperwork before they are "official"

1 hour ago, UBinMD said:

I don't hold any animosity towards them, they have to do what they feel is best for their future. As I have said before, the timing of everything is just so unfortunate for all sides. I do agree that unless there is a gaping hole on a team, it's unlikely to just step in and start Day 1. Maybe Novitsky if Lance is using a similar offensive scheme, but that's a lot to learn in a short time.

It also has a lot to do with Coach Fuchs the O-Line coach going to Kansas.  My guess is his relationship with Novitsky is what made the decision.  Not saying Lance doesn't have anything to do with it either, but my thought is it is more his position coach