MuchMany

Maybe I'm alone here, but what the roster looks like in November will matter a lot to my season predictions. Presutti could pull guys from his Big East connections. Tibbs could find guys from his northeast AAU ties. Cage could land guys he knows from the DMV. The fact is the "facts" haven't been formed yet. The roster is going to look very different and that's a good thing. I expect some real talent to arrive this spring, like the staff's jobs depend on it.

If I had to guess why it isn't "public," it's because he hasn't officially signed his LOI for whatever reason. So they can't comment on a player in that case. Why would you exclude Sabol's last game of the year in his stats? That game mattered just as much as any other one. Not really fair to arbitrarily remove a nice shooting game from his season stats.

It's public. It's Brayden Jackson from Fort Erie Academy. Plenty of discussion on him in the Recruiting sub forum. I'll post something of my own when I get some time, but for now just a couple points of clarification to your previous post: RH3...not sure if you have Robert Griffin in the brain or? Sabol's three point shooting was not "off" most of the season. He was hot and cold for sure, with games of 0-4 0-5 0-6 balanced by 7-10 6-8 5-8. But he shot 37.6% on the season, which is excellent for anyone let alone a lightly recruited freshman. Boldin was a useful player and showed a lot of promise before getting shut down with an injury. He doesn't belong lumped in with McVeigh, who struggled with the speed and feel of the college game most of the year.

He's just a painfully unintelligent man. I read his quotes like people watch car crashes, unable to look away. Like, what??? “Any time you reach an aspiration of running your own program and all the work that you put in, all the years of work that goes into getting to that point that you’re an FBS head coach, I will tell you it was an extremely difficult decision to leave that,” Linguist told the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. “I wouldn’t have left it for anything.”

Yeah let's hear some details lol

Yeah I mean six guys who will be out of a job at this time next year unless things turn around here. Seems like it should be major motivation to hit the portal hard.

Curious what makes you think this. The next two months are going to be incredibly active for transfers. And we have two HS commits that seems as good as what JW was signing. I don't want to get ahead of myself on the negativity before anything actually happens. The coming off-season does not have to follow the course of this season. The staff certainly knows it will be in trouble if it does, so I expect quite an effort here.

Winning what exactly??

Was it just last year that he was here for the Spring Game or do I have my schedule mixed up?

Gotta disagree with this point. His shooting is streaky sure, but it's still solid. But he looks entirely more comfortable on the court now compared to November. Ball handling, staying in front of guys on D, he looks like a young college player now whereas he looked like a HS player in the fall.

Yeah I like his defense too. High-major athlete/size with a quiet intensity to his game. In the staff's defense a bit, he did look completely lost in early action. Tricky balance to get him game experience while also trying to field a somewhat competitive team. His maturation has been notable though.

Bryson Wilson is a reason to be excited for next season. His skill is catching up with his athleticism.

I tend to agree that most of it is team context, his role, and an injury (that we heard nothing about, because of course). But regardless of the reason, he has been underwhelming to bad this year. The assists and heavy usage don't even prop up his overall ORTG. That said, he'll absolutely be a useful piece next year if he hangs around but from talking to some folks that sounds less likely. It shouldn't be impossible to find a replacement in the portal though.

Although not having a lead guard like Jones forced Adams to play out of position as a point forward (essentially a lead guard) and likely threw his game into the uneven state we see. Having an actual lead guard, while not worth ten wins, would have slotted everyone including Adams into a more appropriate position, role, and rank in the pecking order. Agreed. They did get Graham, but he wasn't supposed to play this year and looks like he forgot how to play basketball anyways. There's a lot of pressure on the staff to find a couple readymade MAC starters this off-season via their high-major connections.

Why look at days when we're talking about four months??

Pretty clear, if unimpressive, improvement. Matches the eye test of effort and organization. It's been marginal but the freshmen have matured and we don't look totally lost as a team anymore.

I think we'd be best off keeping the five newcomers (Boldin, Fulcher, Sabol, McVeigh, Wilson), I guess Zaakir, and adding seven new players that fit the systems that GH3 wants to run. More shooters, more ball handlers, a good big.

You've got a reputation around here for having measured, sober-minded takes, but I'm sorry this one feels like outlandish hyperbole to me!

GH3 was really coaching us up to get a stop and bucket at the end there...and that flipped the spread.

Kent is a 15.5 point favorite.

I agree with you that re: budget we are peers and could expect to have the same things UMass has based on that. I was only trying to explore why it is that even though we are budgetary peers, we have an entirely different NIL reality. The reason is that UMass has a built in diehard fanbase and UB has like, me and 50 other people. UMass has had dedicated organized fans since long before UB returned to D1. Both my folks are dual UMass and UB alums, and I remember as a kid going to a WNY alumni watch party for the 1996 Final Four vs Kentucky. I imagine their AD has close relationships with them which helped when it came time to form the collective. UMass is also just more of a sports school sadly. They compete for National titles in hockey. That doesn't excuse ADMA's sluggish acceptance of NIL, but I hope we can learn from them and other more advanced peer institutions.

Nice. But man, UMass has such a deeper hoops history and better fanbase. Really hard to compare.

Doty and #4 Fulton face #1 West Genesee tonight at 5:30 on a neutral court. Winner moves on to Saturday's Section 3 Class AA championship. He had 31p/15r/5a/7s/2b in Fulton's 71-50 quarterfinal win.

Hey at least we aren't the east coast black sheep cousins anymore!

Pulled this data from Verbal Commits to see the landscape of the MAC. I sorted it by open offers to the current HS junior class as that stood out to me the most. I know our staff hasn't even been here for a full year, but they had a full summer and now nearly a full HS season to evaluate. Why do we offer so few kids? For 2025, we have one commit (hand-delivered from DC by Cage) and three offers (one of which was made by the previous staff). We're also one of three to not have an offer out to 2026 yet. A possible explanation could be the staff is looking more to the transfer portal after a big freshman class that I imagine was challenging to assemble. Also they likely know that next season has to be much better for job security's sake, so more established talent is preferred.