hurley

What a great win for the team.  These games are both a wake up call and help you gain mental toughness. While the game was always close the team always seemed composed and never felt like their was a significant chance to lose.  Absolutely brutal to watch, but somehow we still managed to score 88 points at what seemed like a grueling pace with all the fouls and turnovers.

Jeremy Harris is not to be trifled with in MAC play.  On to EMU!

WOW what a big win for Cuse and if effect Buffalo.  That gives us a true marquee win.  Go orange!

Here’s an update on the top 25 teams who have lost this week. 

11, Auburn, 1 loss

12, UNC, 1 loss

13, FSU, 1 loss

14, Mississippi State, 2 losses

15, NC State, 1 loss

16, Ohio State 2 losses

17, Houston, 1 loss

20, Iowa State, 2 losses

22, Indiana, 1 loss

23, Oklahoma, 1 loss

24, SJU, 1 loss

25, TCU, 2 losses

I imagine we’ll move up to 16 passing Houston, OSU and MSU.

I could possibly see us passing NC State but they also had a nice win today at home against a solid Pittsburgh team.

They could also penalize UNC pretty hard after they got beat by at home by Louisville by 21 today!

I see no risk of anyone to behind us jumping us. Ole Miss is likely to make the biggest jump after beating two top 15 teams this week including 1 on the road. 

Good to see that we've seemed to have built a base of 3k+ attendance over the last 5+ years or so.  Lets see if we can keep it at 4k+ for the next 6 now!

I think we pass MSU, OSU and UH if we take care of business cleanly on Saturday. NC State will probably stay at 15 imo. 3 slots would be a terrific week. If we get anything above that it’s cloud nine. 

Could be wrong here but I bet they are giving a lot of those tickets to family and friends of the students 

I watched the second half and OT of the Marquette game.  Markus Howard is absolutely unreal.  In my mind he should be the clear cut favorite for the Wooden award currently.  54 tonight and made 10 threes

Zach Filzen fan or the man himself!? @FilzenFor3

Gentlemen,

If you are not a season ticket holder and want decent seats to this game I would advise you to go get yours now.  I happened to check Ticketmaster today and they had section 105 seats available.  I called the UB ticket sales office to see if any of the more middle sections (102-104 or 203-205) would be released and the lady on the phone stated that those seats will not be sold to the public.  They are either sold out or whatever is remaining is reserved to season ticket holders as an upgrade for the game.  She was surprised that even 105 seats were available and recommended I get them now if I wanted 100 level seats.  I did my purchase through Ticketmaster, not through the phone so their was no added incentive for her to make anything up.

Does anyone know if all the 100 and 200 level seats are already sold out?  I'm trying to find tickets but everything is in the 300 level or the bleachers.  

I think we're underestimating the importance of this game.  It's been a euphoric season, but like almost all teams in all seasons they are susceptible to tough stretches, similar to that of how Gonzaga has played recently. If we lose this game, then hit a rough stretch where we lose 2 in a week or something in conference play and lose in the conference championship then we'll be sweating Sunday.

This game puts as an absolute lock and likely keeps up in top 25 even if we lose to Toledo on January 8th.  Their will be no naysayers if come Sunday this week we're still undefeated. Not only that if we win this game we have a serious chance of getting anywhere between a 4-6 seed which is where we want to be so we can avoid playing a 1 or 2 seed in second round. It's unlikely we'll fall to a double digit seed if we did win the MAC and that would land us as an 7-9 (10-12 if we were an at-large).  As a 4/5/6 it is significantly easier path to a second weekend which should be the goal of the season.  Anything beyond that is a welcomed addition.

Lets finish up 2018 with a 0 in the loss column!

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. One game at a time. Our guys our going to be tired.  Yesterday was by far the most our starters have played all year and have a quick turn around for our hardest game of the year. We need a really big game from our bench as they really struggled against Syracuse.  

Just by looking at this teams stats you can see it's pretty clear how this team operates I expect to see a lot of:

Markus Howard attacking the rim and kicking it out to the perimeter to their big guys (who appear to be brothers) that are both 6'8 and shoot above 40% from 3pt.  Great opportunity for Jordan to continue to show he can lock down NBA level talent on Howard and for Caruthers to have a bounce back game.  If we can 20 turnovers we win this game easily.  15+ turnovers and it's close but I think we pull it out. 

Made it unscathed to our biggest week of the regular season.  What an incredible season and this team just keeps finding different ways to win.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to watch much of this game in the 2nd half (so understand my comments are only based on numbers) but a quick look at the box score is both encouraging and a little worrying.  

CJ struggling to hit the three ball but still finds a way to have a good game. We created 22 turnovers!! When you can create such havoc on defense it will be hard to lose. I can’t say enough about what Nate has done to get this team playing as one cohesive unit. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say he’s a Brad Stevens once in a lifetime coach. Call me crazy, but I think he’s that good.

What I’m beginning to get relatively concerned about is our shooting.  We simply haven’t shot well consistently all year. Sure we’ve had our moments and some great games, but we simply may not be as good of a shooting team as we think. I don’t think that’s the case but going 7-30 from three is cause for concern as thats not abnormal for us this year.

I don’t want the team to change the style of play whatsoever but it could easily be an Achilles heel for us in tougher games where teams are able to slow the tempo down and reduce turnovers. In other words the conference tournament. 

It puts a lot of pressure on our defense, which I think is the strong suit of this team. I’d be curious to see the stats of the big runs we go on and how many turnovers we turn during those spans. 

Good luck to those in in fantasy football playoffs today and onward to Syracuse! Go bulls! 

I'll be there mid-court(ish) behind the Cuse bench w/ my brother (alumni) and parents.  We bought tickets to this once we saw it on the schedule.  AMPED!  Take care of business this Saturday and then an absolutely huge game.  Would anyone have any interest if I found a meetup spot before the game to grab a few beers?

Saturday is our biggest test since WVU in my opinion. Big rivalry game on the road with a huge target on us to take out a ranked and undefeated opponent. I actually had both the UB and Bonnies game on (parents are both Siena alum) and they looked very good, although Siena is terrible this year. 

I was really excited to see Caruthers step up and be the guy tonight that helped separate us early in the 2nd half. He will be very confident heading into the game Saturday and I think he will be the key match up on Saturday against Courtney Stockard.  They are 3-0 since he returned and he has played great in each game.  Big strong guard that may prove to be a bit too much size for Jordan so I'm curious to see how Oates plays it.

Here is a video of him from NCAA tourney last year if you need a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhs3rUc0_4o

Additionally, we've gotten out to our games very slow this year and crushed teams late.  Can't let that happen on Saturday.  In that small gym it gets very loud and if we get behind early with missed shots and turning the ball over (10 TO's 1st half tonight) we could be in a tough hole. Jump out to an early 5-10 point lead and hold it the best we can while still playing our game.  Curious to see if the young guys get any burn in this.  Williams has not looked great, Segu looks more confident and sure of himself out there.  Fagan seems to be falling out of the rotation entirely except for wash up minutes.

One final note.  This Bonnie team was predicted bottom half of A-10 (9th from what I remember).  Tough game, but we should expect to win this even though it is a feat yet to be had.

My prediction?  A close one with Harris crushing them down the stretch: 93 -75 Buffalo.

Go Bulls!!

@dutchcountry7  your making some valuable points.  I think I may reconsider my stance and agree with you.

Bigger jump than expected!  If we get to 10-0 before the Cuse and Marquette game that should put us at 13-15 range.  If we manage to go 2-0 that week we'll be a lock for top 10.  One game at a time of course, but exciting times ahead!  Lets go bulls!!

Do one in season home/home series as we are with Southern Illinois.  I would not be willing to give up the Marquette game for a second series of a similar stature.  Great experience for the kids, tough test that prepares them for top quality teams.  LeMoyne does nothing for us. Rather than schedule a second set of home/home each year I would gladly give up LeMoyne and go play another tough road game.  More resources for the program as it would likely be a buy game.  I find it hard to believe the LeMoyne game will pull in more revenue than a tough road game that would be better for our resume and game experience.  I see literally 0 benefit of LeMoyne game.  

Your best friend will be here.  Check on game day about 30 min before game time and you should be able to get it. I watch virtually all my sports through a stream from a subredddit for the respective sport. They have their issues sometimes but usually they are pretty good.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ncaaBBallStreams/

If all goes well on Friday I really hope we get SFU on Saturday.  Team is some places is projected for 3rd overall in the WCC, ahead of BYU.  If by some miracle they beat the Zags or Saint Mary's during conference play could be another decent win.  Any idea if we'll be able to watch this game anywhere online?  

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncb/conference-tournaments/west-coast-bracket/?anchor=proj-standings

Looking at these rankings and what a joke some of it is!  Purdue jumps 5 spots from 24 to 19 for beating Robert Morris!  Their best win is Davidson, while they lost at home to VT by 6.

Texas jumping us makes sense a they had a strong W this week. Texas Tech jumped from 40 to 20 for beating Northern Colorado and Nebraska.  Nebraska is 5-1, but that is their best win of the year by a large margin. 

Even Ohio State could be argued.  They were ranked behind us even though they had 2 strong road wins at Cincy and Creighton earlier in the season.  This week they beat Samford and Cleveland state easily. We played very strong this week against teams of similar stature. if those 2 strong road wins were already "priced in" why would they jump us this week?

Still a lot of disrespect out there for mid-majors.

Welp, I was clearly off!  Probably better we don't go flying up the polls and increase pressure.  Keep playing like we are and we'll continue our slow, yet continuous, climb to the top 10!

1 great performance and 1 good performance against sub-par teams this week for us.  14-19 all lost atleast once this week. 

I think we’ll move up to number 18 this week with all the losses above us.  Where does everyone else think we’ll fall?