Tee4three

Brock playing some solid minutes

Liking the teams energy as well, they're into it

8 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

Outside of Williams and Mballa in the starting 5 we don’t have length. Graves, Johnson and Jordan are all 6’3 and under. I think we need to see more lineup tinkering. Again at this point this team is lost. So whatever experiment can work why the hell not.

The length comment more along of the lines of possibilities, with mballa hardnett williams then nickelberry

16 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

Often times when a team isn’t good at something the solution is never to try something fundamentally different. I think we can agree that on offense we struggle against a zone defense right. What makes you think the players on this team can grasp learning and employing a zone defense when we can’t execute zone offense. You think there’d be some crossover of zone principles. But hell whatever let’s try it. At this point whatever, this team is lost. 

All I got that zone could work is length other than that I don't think it would work. But I do think it could force them to learn to do things they are not doing

2 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

Sorry I’m just frustrated. It starts with the players buying in and committing to defense. Jordan doesn’t even look like a former DPOY.  There has to be better ball pressure. Better communication of the weak side. Better help and team defense. If teams are going to drive on us then we need to funnel them to Mballa. Instead we give them the lane and a lay up. 

Zero team defense all a bunch of individuals

Zone would force them to work together, communicate. Both things they seem to refuse to do. 

Another option let Jordan rome and read the play and have him be the help everywhere. Let the other guys provide the pressure. Let Jordan finish the defense

1 minute ago, Erie County said:

I think a zone would be great for lowing FG%

Also, I like the press personally. It's the best defensive scheme they've shown by far

Id love for them to press and then switch between a zone and man 

3 minutes ago, SGBull said:

While I do feel like our defense has been very bad this year, we have also gotten very unlucky. Teague, a guy who shoots 20% from 3, has hit multiple tough 3s in a half against us.

I was just thinking this, seems like teams hit shots against us shooting 56% from 2 and 43% from 3. The 3 point percentage should drop. Not out of it yet

But defensively we back up a bit too much. Not enough help defense, lack of switching and communication

28 minutes ago, Kevin said:

That's fine. I agree with some of those points.

My questions are this though: do you feel comfortable about this team in March? 

I do. What ive seen is this team seems to get up for a challenge, minus the vandy game. They played well against uconn and beat DePaul mainly but the other non conference games as well.

The home losses are worrisome but I want to see them against a ball state team on the road. I watched ball state toledo, this is a game we should win

1 hour ago, Kevin said:

I just don't get the "rebuilding" argument. 

This coach, was hired, mostly because he was able to keep this team together and not lose any of the core that was built. The last I checked, Segu, Williams, Johnson,  Graves, Jordan, and to a lesser degree Fagan, Brock, and Grant were all here working with Whitesell last season and growing with the team.  This isn't a rebuild of failure which everyone was fired for underperforming. This was a promotion for a coach because of success. That's why he got this job. CONTINUITY and KNOWLEDGE of the team that's in place. He sure didn't get the job selling it as a rebuild to Alnutt.

But now we want it both ways where it's now a "rebuild" when it isn't going to plan. 

This team is coming off back to back seasons winning a game in the tournament and posting their best seasons ever. 

Teams like EMU and Miami lose like 3 starters to transfers every year, while keeping their coaches. This is rebuilding. No one wants to stay or play for these teams.

 

How many minutes did the guys that returned actually play last year? We lost 5 seniors you could argue 4 of them were all time great bulls. That is a lot. That isn't your average turn over in a program

Rebuilding is the wrong terminology in my opinion, this season has always been about keeping the ship headed in the right direction while getting key young pieces experience in leadership roles.

A great example of what the expectations for this team should be is Wichita State last year. They had lost a lot of talent but had a great in coming class and were young inexperienced everywhere. They started slow losing to teams they should beat and winning games they shouldn't. By the end of the season they started to put it together and made a run to the NIT semi's.

Tldr: this season isn't about the now, its about March, not because thats the only way we make the tournament but its the only way you can see if the team has progressed and where they are headed

1 minute ago, Jeseph said:

It's not that I would have expected us to be undefeated at this stage in the game. But are we really calling HOME losses to Dartmouth, Army and NIU "growing pains" or "consequence of rebuilding"?

It's either coaching or lack of focus from the team IMO. These are inferior teams that we're losing to, at home. The other losses are fine, those 3 are concerning to me.

I will be ecstatic if JW rights the ship but I do think the ship needs to be right-ed.

The home losses are what is concerning especially to teams that we are much better than. If those same losses happened on the road it wouldnt be as much of a red flag. I've seen improvement in the offense, would like to see the same on the defensive side too

But lets remember this team was going into the season with brock as its starter until at the last minute mballa received a wavier. How do we interpret that? That they expected this to be a throw away season? Or that the staff is in over their head? Id lean towards throw away season, with the level of recruits we have coming in next season

2 hours ago, DocCas86 said:

Overall, I think it is too soon to get overly concerned despite disappointing performance  in opening game. 

Reasons for optimism - Offensively the points per possession (which factor in eFG%, offensive rebounds (a strength) and turnovers) has been trending up over the course of the year.  This is resulting from improved shooting as of late, and efforts on the offensive boards.  I was also encouraged by the reduction of turnovers.

Reason for concern is a creep in Points per Possession for their opponents as well:

So  I will look for them to tighten up the defense in coming games as the biggest priority.

It's still too soon to worry and just watching ub and other teams, ub has good offense for a mid major and better than some major teams too ive watched. The issue this year has been defense. Seems like teams are constantly having at least one half a game with 60% shooting percentages

You really think that Robinson and freeman chose a school because of ub's 2nd assistant coach and nothing else?

Whitesell should be a topic here, but I'm not completely following what your reasons are

15 minutes ago, BasketBull said:

Very similar to last year's opener between these two teams. Both look unathletic and unimpressive. Buffalo isn't as good as they were but I still think they're a class above these guys most nights. 

I don't know if another team can match buffalo's natural talent/athleticism. Especially the 2 teams I just watched.

Interested in the bowling green Kent game

1 minute ago, SGBull said:

Turned on the Ball state vs Toledo game, can’t help but think that Mballa is going to feast on MAC forwards.

Both teams don't look very good

Cool tournament to be apart of. Not as high level as this past year but some solid mid major teams

I like that there are teams from all over the country in it. 

1 hour ago, dutchcountry7 said:

Students at UB just don’t care about the basketball team. Or really any of the sports teams.  

It is slowly getting better as each year the team wins you have some more incoming freshmen that like basketball and start to go to games but there isn’t really a student following like you would expect from the state flagship.  It is sad.  Someday...

Its definitely gotten better. But I wouldn't say they don't care, its just not ingrained in the student culture yet. Considering the run they are on started 5/6 years ago you should start to see a steady increase.

Also on topic of local students not going to games during break, as a local who went to ub do you really want to go to your "job" on a vacation? Looking back on it it shouldn't matter but at the time it did.

What ub should do on these student break games, is bring in high school students on tours/or something similar

On topic of this thread Go Bulls, bonnies stink

Johnson and Grant(more grant than Johnson) get as much playing as they do because of their shooting capabilities. Thats a skill not many on the roster have.

Grants 3 point shots just haven't fallen, he has good touch just bad luck right now. Right now the best thing to do is to get him better on the defensive side or hope he starts hitting shots because he has been bad so far and we need him to help space the floor on offense

This game is the season in a nut shell

Frustration 

See the potential

More frustration/stupid plays

See the potential

This could be a handful come march if they can put it all together and get brock or Fagan to provide quality minutes

I think what we are seeing is a team that is growing. Besides jordan our key plays are young. 

The key is to continue growing

 I think the team and the way it plays will change as the season progresses. We don't have 2 of the best defensive guards in the country anymore. And the one we still have is counted on more to do the heavy lifting offensively. 

One adjustment I think could make a difference is a full on press the majority of the game, think this will help with our lack of depth at the 5 and true point guard. Plus it will keep the game speed up

2 minutes ago, MKBullsfan said:

Anyone see Texas Tech beat the #1 ranked team Louisville tonight? So you know what that means...If DePaul beat Texas Tech and Buffalo beat DePaul, then Buffalo is better than Texas Tech which beat the #1 team in the nation. Basically UB has a case to be the #1 team in the nation. 

It definitely shows the talent level on this team

DePaul beat texas tech in the days leading up to the game against ub

Texas tech just beat the number 1 team in the country

54 minutes ago, DocCas86 said:

Overall on my go to ranking sites, torvik, kenpom and massey we are generally ranked lower than Alabama, but thought I would have a little fun and share this:

This doesn't even factor in tonight's win.  In full transparency, Massey has ranked us higher than other two sites and they have the lowest ranking of the three sites for Alabama.  By the way I am pulling for Nate - this is more to concur with dc7 that team is doing well.

I was looking at recruiting rankings and ub was one spot higher than Alabama. (Think it was rivals and we were 64 vs Alabama's 65). I got a laugh out of it

But back on topic of this game, once again the team shows tremendous potential. Just got to become more consistent.

They still have the most natural talent of any team in the mac. But having the most talent doesn't mean they will be the best team but it certainly helps.

I think ub wins, some games we look great other games bad. We have been consistently inconsistent so far.

I also haven't been too impressed with DePaul, too me they're the yearly early over achieving team that will fall back. Think st. Johns last year and arizona State the year before

Good ub can win this game, bad ub can't

10 minutes ago, lederh94 said:

I think it is more Buffalo beating themselves than anything Vanderbilt is really doing.

Buffalo is beating themselves but gotta give  Vanderbilt some credit. They are playing hard. I haven't watched a game this year where a team played as hard as they are right now

6 minutes ago, lederh94 said:

I am scared to see what Depaul is gunna do.

I watched 1.5 games of DePaul this year, this Vanderbilt team looks like 10 times the team I have seen from DePaul. 

Rough game. This vandy team is playing hard. They have a team a lot better than what I was expecting