MuchMany

Kent is a 15.5 point favorite. 

17 minutes ago, NC_UBfan said:

I get it but athletic program success aside I think the point I was trying to make is, there is no reason based on comparable budget that UB should not have a similar matured collective/NIL program compared to UMass.The UMass AD approach to this new landscape is completely different from what Alnutt has taken with the same level of budgeted resources. At the end of the day I want UB competing and winning conference championships🤘🏽

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.

18 minutes ago, NC_UBfan said:

With UMass joining the MAC and having a comparable athletics budget to UB at 40mil or so I was curious to see what they had in terms of Collective/NIL and well its pretty well defined. 
 https://umassathletics.com/sports/2023/9/22/massachusetts-nil
https://www.on3.com/nil/collectives/the-massachusetts-collective-188/

 "Patrick MacWilliams founded The Massachusetts Collective in October 2022 with a goal of signing three to five players on the men’s basketball team at UMass every season"

They have a very active social media presence promoting the collective and NIL opportunities for the players   https://twitter.com/TheMassCo
My hope is Alnutt and his team are working diligently to ensure UB athletics will remain competitive.

 

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.

12 minutes ago, MKBullsfan said:

UMass welcome to the MAC and…our state of Ohio favored MAC conference refs especially around tournament time. 

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.

9 minutes ago, promotherobot said:

Watching the game too. Troy fought back to make it close. That gym is rocking on a Thursday night. I don't recall Alumni ever being that pumped. That's college ball.

6,709 for the 84-73 victory over Bowling Green on 3/8/19 was better than this. Totally crazy with three deep around the track.

But yeah ASU had an excellent atmosphere tonight. They play some crazy Oats ball, almost exclusively threes, dunks, and layups, and frenzied highs and lows. Only a 13-14 record coming into the game though, so the on-court product isn't some massive draw yet. Marketing, fun, self-awareness, and energy can go a long way it seems. 

On ESPNU right now Arkansas State is having a party beating top of conference Troy with the Barstool jesters in attendance. It's not quite the atmosphere we had in the best Oats years, but click it on if you want to see what a mid-major school having fun looks like. Oh and they sell the devil's brew too.

Not gonna lie, I'm jealous and so are the UB STHs I'm texting with.

3 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

But would those people have gone to the game if there was no beer?  There is a difference between enjoying something that is offered for sale and only going because it is available.  As I said if you need to be able to have a beer at a game to go to a game you may have a problem.

It's a strange teetotaling misnomer that an adult "needs" to have a beer if they'd simply like to have one at a game. Plus food and drink offerings are obviously a key consideration in modern sports entertainment.

So yes, I'm hypothesizing that some would have chosen not to attend, evidenced by the already meager crowds for the awful on-court product. "With this team, I need glasses to watch. Specifically two glasses, of scotch." (Shout out to the goat Norm Macdonald.)

If a couple buddies in their 20s-30s are considering going to a UB game vs grabbing food and drinks somewhere on a winter evening, it's likely that the option to have a few beers at the game (like hundreds of millions have at sporting events since the Roman Empire) would influence their decision.

UB poobahs would be wise to listen to any advice that breaks up the staid, septuagenarian vibes at basketball and football games. New voices are needed to revamp the deathly boring game presentation and arena experience. We already have quite a few libraries on campus, we don't need Alumni to be one.

2 hours ago, UBlearns said:

But the Tilman Fertittas and T Boone Pickenses and Phil Knights of the world don't grow on trees.  

Spot on with your post. But regarding this last point, give it a couple years - there are some things cooking, at least for hoops. Hopefully they keep things in the rails until then.

3 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

My position was against selling beers because, it is not going to bring one extra person to a game

This absolutely untrue fyi from personal and anecdotal experience. The number of people I've seen socializing and enjoying a drink in the concourse this year during 20 point losses alone shows it's been appreciated. Not to mention it's just civilized to offer adults beverages should they choose to partake.

3 hours ago, rma said:

They are the WIN-NARS! Let’s go let’s go

Annabellllllleeeee x10 😅

1 hour ago, UB92 said:

If I was a debate judge, you'd have won this round.  

I think one thing that has taken a back seat in these discussions is the coaching itself.  I can remember a game when UB lost to Army under JW in a home game they had no business losing.  Oats would have exploded during and after the game...but JW just shrugged (verbally).   They are different leaders, different coaches...even with a lot of the same players.    Certainly UB is spoiled to have had Oats here and the type of play/effort/performance/success he got out of his players.

I know that this sort of "look back in history" is what we are doing now since the current team is at/near the bottom of the MAC conference...and we have to think about the glory days (even if they weren't that long ago).

Thanks for making it all the way to the end of my post 😅 I appreciate @Bullsboys perspective and understand that over an up and down four years, certain things stick with different people.

JW's second year was really good, 20-21. Graves, Jeenathan, Rondo, and Mballa is one of the better big fours in recent MAC memory. That MAC finals loss was a really big letdown. Who knows if the recruiting would have picked up if we'd have won, maybe things could have gone differently. But them's the breaks.

I wish you hadn't reminded me of that Army game. One of the most infuriating home games in my history of attending. 13-point favorites against a bad Army team and lost by 13.

2 minutes ago, UBinMD said:

How pissed would you be if you paid your coach $13 million (Kansas) and you get 2 National Championships over 14 years? Is that a solid investment? Kansas is near the top most years, but that guarantees nothing. Is a Final Four appearance enough to justify the salary? Is a Big 12 Title enough (especially with what the Big 12 will soon become)?

The one good thing for the big programs is they won't have to pay NIL to 1 player for 4 years like UB will, they can just recycle that money to the next guy of the 1 and done players.

If Dayton can pay Jack $75k, should we be able to match something like that for a player like him? Not sure I have a good answer for that. At least CuJo is at a top 25 program and is contributing.

I don't think Kansas fans are pissed at all about what Self has accomplished for their investment. This one hits home for me too since they paid my cousin seven figures to nab him from Michigan. But I agree we should set our sights on catching up with places like Dayton before even mentioning national tiles.

8 hours ago, Bullsboys said:

I disagree with inheriting Oats players being the only reason the PPG and tempo were high - When they were with Oats they barely played - Whitesell and his staff Developed JeeNathan Williams and Segu - See the stats below.

Yes - They were recruited by Oats Staff with Hodgson and Whitesell but they developed under Whitesell - That is a big part of coaching! Developing players! He also kept these players for their entire careers when they could all of easily jumped in the transfer portal at any point! 
Development and retention is huge!
The only noticeable loss from the rotation for JW with retention was when Skogman transferred out! 

Style of play that they ran was similar to Oats with a fast paced - set based offense. I 100% agree that the shooting let them down - Graves struggled shooting his senior year and Brewton/Jack were brought in to be shooters and were both inconsistent - Losing Skogman was big too as they didn't really have a big-man who could stretch the floor like Perkins/McRae did. 

I thought our offense was entertaining and good to watch - I enjoy these conversations though - they take me to better times compared to what we have watched this season - But I think when it comes to JW we can agree to disagree on the outcome! 

Also - I tried to upload screenshots of stats above - Ive never uploaded pictures before on here so no idea if they worked right or not - Im not the most Tech Savvy person out there 

 

You misquoted be a bit. I said that PPG was high because of tempo and leftover talent, not that leftover talent was the reason for PPG and tempo. Whitesell rolled the ball out and said play "Nate Ball," and it became less successful the further we got from Nate's brain and his players.

And of course Segu and Williams didn't play much in their one year under Oats, as freshmen on The Best Team Ever. Then, to be expected, they became three year mainstays under Whitesell when CJ and Co departed. They were the two best recruits in UB history and we never sniffed talent like that again. I'm not sure JW had much to do with their recruitment either, as I was under the impression that BH and JQ were the recruiters in that order.

The staff deserves varying credit for developing Jeenathan and Rondo while here. Jeenathan absolutely improved, esp his outside shooting, handle, and decision making. Rondo on the other hand kind of stalled out and never reached the ceiling I thought possible. Mballa as well stalled and then regressed. I don't know who deserves what credit and blame for those developments, but I grant that JW had a hand in it all.

Retention is important yes, but it was also the key reason JW got the job in the first place, so it was expected and required of him.

Not sure I can agree to disagree, as the results speak for themselves. The outcome of his tenure was a failure to maintain the lofty national profile and success that Oats established. Further, a failure to even maintain our standing within the MAC as a perennial title contender that lasted for six years between Oats and Hurley.

The roster was increasingly pieced together by bad fits, short-term JUCO and transfer fixes (the opposite of what built our best rosters in the past), and our overall recruiting had fallen off a cliff. Fan support was drying up as on-court results worsened. Granted Covid and the new transfer landscape were new wrenches thrown into JW's tenure, but every coach in the nation had to deal with the same and I felt he showed a lack of agility responding to the emergent new reality of CBB.

It's easy to look at the shocking results this year and reminisce on the previous regime with rose-colored glasses, but the truth is the program had already fallen under JW. Recruiting was dead, we were playing challenging schedules that players nor coaches were up for leading to discouraging results, and overall energy around the program was low.

Everyone I know who knew JW and staff have the highest praise for their character and passion, that's never been in doubt. But the point remains, it was reasonable to call for change once it was clear that the lofty goals that we all have for the program had become out of reach. And I grant that this year has been a reality check regarding what our expectations should be. The resulting search, hire, and status of the current staff can absolutely be scrutinized, but I'm at least trying to keep an open mind by acknowledging where we're starting over from.

4 hours ago, TheCommish said:

We do all three, we will be in the national championship discussion each year.

Definitely some useful information in your post re: NIL at other schools.

But the above is just hyperbole. Even the blue bloods find it challenging to stay in the national championship discussion each year. I think keeping expectations reasonable and focusing on baby steps is wise.

Some recent highlights

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3ltW0CvGDx/?igsh=bTU5dGZ1NWVuc2l4

Felt that 5-10 point win coming. Fun game and loudest the crowd has been all year after long of Sy's dunks. EMU really stinks though. 

We were the much better team. Sy is a freaky talent at this level. High amplitude dunks and blocks. It's a shame we won't see him with a better surrounding cast and more experienced coaching.

I'm more hopeful for next year than I've been at any point this season. The freshmen are growing up, Zaakir is a decent role player. The team as a whole looks more organized and comfortable. Give me a two man freshman class of SG/SF and a two man transfer class of PG/C. 

On 2/18/2024 at 12:06 AM, Bullsboys said:

I think you were watching a different team to me- Per KenPom under JW they ranked top 20 every year in Pace of Play/Tempo - They played a fast uptempo style of basketball which is miles better than what we see now.

Also in 2 of the 4 years of JW Tenure they ranked top 100 in Offensive efficiency - Year 1 was almost a full rebuild where they lost CJ, Perk, Harris, Caruthers, McRae - Year 4 they lost everybody on the roster essentially 

MAC conference Rankings for scoring under JW;
2019-20 = 1st - 78.6PPG - Graves and Jordan were only returners who played meaningful mins on the last team
2020-21 = 1st - 81.4PPG
2021-22 = 2nd - 79.7PPG
2022-23 = 3rd - 77.5PPG - (Lost Williams, Mballa, Segu etc) - Full rebuild

For context;
2023-24 = 11th - 67.2PPG 

I don't see your point about us being a heavy ISO team though - because as you can see above we scored very well - Williams was a very good ISO player, as was Segu - Why wouldn't we ISO with them?
For the record I thought we were fun to watch and moved the ball plenty. 

What is done is done though - It just irks me the level of hate JW gets on here 

Their PPG was due to having leftover talent from Oats and leftover tempo from Oats. As we got further from Oats, the talent and coaching that made his system go fell off. The PPGs you cited aren't impressive once you consider we were playing a top 10-20 tempo in those seasons.

We do remember things differently, because I remember sitting in the crowd wondering why everyone was standing around the perimeter instead of moving through the D. Then we'd jack a late three and pray for the offensive board. Our assist rate fell off once JW became HC, even with a very good MAC PG in Rondo. Can anyone tell me what type of offense JW ran here? Coach Jacob, here's your chance.

As the Doc pointed out, the struggles of his iso ball almost always spelled doom against the top of the MAC. As good as Jeenathan, Graves, and Rondo were at iso ball, good teams knew how to shut it down when it mattered. Also, "iso ball players" aren't only good in iso situations, so mixing in running an actual offense that gets them in advantageous situations is what the best teams do. Kobe Bryant was an excellent iso player, but he also benefitted from offensive design that got him in pindowns, post ups, downhill off screens, etc. 

The offense was sustained by elite offensive rebounding led by Mballa and Jeenathan, which good teams were able to snuff out. His rosters never had enough shooting, quality or quantity. He basically tried to run Oats' run and gun dunks and 3's system, but completely forgot the most important part, outside shooting. It doesn't work without it.

His recruiting let him down in the end. I always pissed and moaned about it and they never corrected it. Quality players make everything go, or not go, in the end.

17 minutes ago, trueblue32 said:

Offense so good we should remove the player with the best assist rate just to see what happens

His assist rate wouldn't be nearly as impressive if he were actually hitting shots. The formula is 100 * AST / (((MP / (Tm MP / 5)) * Tm FG) - FG). He's not contributing nearly enough of his own FGs, which would push the divisor higher and his AST% down.

He has done better at distributing than I expected when it became apparent that he'd be forced to be the team's primary ball handler as a point forward. However, his overall offensive game has suffered greatly as a result of being miscast in that role. He has an 87.4 ORTG on 25.9 usage - that's really really bad. If any deeper stat heads want to pull it up, I'd love to know how many guys in D1 have a higher usage rate with a worse ORTG.

So many of this team's struggles can be traced back to the failure of the staff to add a veteran PG to the roster. Armoni Foster was nothing special, but I think this team would have 5 more wins if he were still here.

7 minutes ago, skrabukes said:

Hopefully more triumphant than the last debacle of a game that you attended!

Lol. I take full responsibility for that one. 

Making my triumphant return to a live game tonight! Expecting a 5-10 point win to be honest.

Doty and Fulton play their Section 3 Class AA quarters at home Friday evening. In a 70-58 loss to likely opponent Fayetteville-Manlius on 2/9, his line was 24p/8r/7a/5s.

Here's his game log

2 minutes ago, RapidsFan said:

?? Not sure if you're incorrectly implying that's me, but I've met plenty of people on this board in person.

I was just pointing out how ridiculous your suggested unqualified, arm's reach hires were in light of you complaining about Lembo hiring people he's familiar with.

11 hours ago, RapidsFan said:

Reggie Witherspoon as AD, Turner Battle as head coach, and let one of the Murchie kids run the Alumni Association

Would anyone object to that?

cough NEPOTISM HIRES cough cough