UB basketball season opener

[rma]

46 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

To me having the student section behind the baskets is lame and not good for visibility. Not visibility in the sense of vantage point but recognition, intimidation etc. When alumni became bougie and moved the students from behind the benches to the ends, that to me is when they lost interest. 

Completely agree. Schools like WVU and Bona have a huge home advantage because the students are right on the court. The Bona student section that isn’t behind the baskets is only a few hundred students. WVU has the entire sideline opposite the benches designated for students, a bit more than Bona.

Instead we have a okay/decent number of students show up, but because they’re all over the GA zones (each baseline is ~1,000 “seats”) it looks like nothing and they aren’t able to provide a huge home court advantage because they aren’t all in one area cheering together. 

Can’t move them behind the team benches because I don’t think that’s allowed anymore. I think the best way to fix it is kill the current 100’s on the side opposite the benches (currently donor seating) and turn that into student section seating. It’s probably enough to fit around 1k students with bleacher seats.

 

ETA: Pissing off donors is not the goal (I am sure this would ruffle feathers) but getting the student section more involved and providing a better atmosphere pays huge dividends. 
 

WVU’s student section seating isn’t even benches. It’s kind of just standing room and chair back seats can be attached to them (concerts, graduation, etc). This would make it work with the non-basketball events that happen at AA where you need actual seats. 

Edited November 7, 2023 by rma

[Tee4three]

Things I liked

Looked organized, look like they have been coached

Things I worry about, rebounding ball handling and shot creation

FDU is for lack of better wording a gimmick team with how small they play/pressing all game long and the throw back motion offense 

So this game may not have been a great game to judge how the rest of the season will play out but it was a great game to play to work on specific skills 

[Bullsboys]

14 hours ago, MuchMany said:

Why was a coach rebuilding in his 4th year on the job? Because he never recruited well beyond "Oats players," using your logic. 

Uh things like graduation. Things like conditioning a player to be NBA ready. It happens to tons of 4th year coaches. They just don’t have a terrible fan base calling for their heads every single year despite success. 

[clodney]

2 hours ago, enrique14150 said:

1. The commuter portion of the fanbase is probably not coming all the way back to campus unless they live close by.  So for students, they probably get who's on campus.  However, since a third of the season falls during the elongated winter break, they desperately need to find a way to get some of those commuters to some games.

THIS. I feel like I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years. My experience at UB, which occurred in the days with HUGE student crowds, was that those who lived off-campus didn't go to games at all. This included commuters and the partiers down in the heights. If you wanted to get the students involved you simply had to go around to the dorms to drum up excitement and hand out a few free pizzas. Eddie Asbie proved this concept works. IMO There's no point in trying to win over local students. They'll never consider UB a true sporting event since it will always be in the shadow of Bills/Sabres games.

As for the game yesterday, I was pretty encouraged by our performance. I was a bit worried about our incoming talent but they looked like they fit the part. Now we have to see if they actually develop and play as a team - both things missing from Whitesell's era.

[Inthesticks]

Team is a work in progress obviously.

Better game day experience for everyone is when the place is well attended.  Comp tickets don't' guarantee a sellout, but if games like last nights event had 5,000-6,000 people in the seats, the culture would grow even for a team that only wins 13 -16 games. Other D1 teams do this.  https://cuse.com/form/24

UB administration should know weeks and sometimes months ahead of time what the projected attendance will be for every game.  It'd take more work from athletics department, but why not fill those empty seats with youth groups and schools for free if legal or have a drastic ticket price cut for them.   There's at least 100,000 kids ages 10-18 in Erie County eligible to fill 2,000-3,000 seats.  Many parents would go since their kid would go too.  If it ever went back to 2019 days, those seats could be purchased instead.

[ChubbyHubby]

Last night, the West bleachers had quite a number of students there.  If they were all in the East end where they're supposed to be, it would have been a decent looking student section.  Of course, then the West end would have been empty.

[MuchMany]

10 minutes ago, Bullsboys said:

Uh things like graduation. Things like conditioning a player to be NBA ready. It happens to tons of 4th year coaches. They just don’t have a terrible fan base calling for their heads every single year despite success. 

Nah. No idea what "conditioning a player to be NBA ready" has to do with a coach's downward trajectory over four years. Weak recruiting is really the story. Not sure what success you're referring to.

[MuchMany]

11 minutes ago, Inthesticks said:

Team is a work in progress obviously.

Better game day experience for everyone is when the place is well attended.  Comp tickets don't' guarantee a sellout, but if games like last nights event had 5,000-6,000 people in the seats, the culture would grow even for a team that only wins 13 -16 games. Other D1 teams do this.  https://cuse.com/form/24

UB administration should know weeks and sometimes months ahead of time what the projected attendance will be for every game.  It'd take more work from athletics department, but why not fill those empty seats with youth groups and schools for free if legal or have a drastic ticket price cut for them.   There's at least 100,000 kids ages 10-18 in Erie County eligible to fill 2,000-3,000 seats.  Many parents would go since their kid would go too.  If it ever went back to 2019 days, those seats could be purchased instead.

This is an excellent idea.

[clodney]

18 minutes ago, Bullsboys said:

Uh things like graduation. Things like conditioning a player to be NBA ready. It happens to tons of 4th year coaches. They just don’t have a terrible fan base calling for their heads every single year despite success. 

What success did we have exactly? We had won the MAC 4 out of 5 years, had perhaps our greatest recruiting class in the history of the school which included an NBA-level talent (as you mentioned), and we were filling our arena nightly with an energized fanbase. The future was bright and the program was poised to maintain its position as a national midmajor power, until we switched coaches and proceeded to: 

 - Year 1: Lose by double digits to the 12-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney

 - Year 2: Lose by double digits to the 5-seed in the MAC Championship, followed by a first round loss in the NIT

 - Year 3: Lose to the 4-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney

 - Year 4: Lose by 24pts to the 4-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney - after a sub .500 season

You cannot fault our fanbase for being completely pissed off at that downward spiral. He'll always be remembered as the guy who tanked our program.

Edited November 7, 2023 by clodney

[BullBoy]

22 minutes ago, clodney said:

What success did we have exactly? We had won the MAC 4 out of 5 years, had perhaps our greatest recruiting class in the history of the school which included an NBA-level talent (as you mentioned), and we were filling our arena nightly with an energized fanbase. The future was bright and the program was poised to maintain its position as a national midmajor power, until we switched coaches and proceeded to: 

 - Year 1: Lose by double digits to the 12-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney

 - Year 2: Lose by double digits to the 5-seed in the MAC Championship, followed by a first round loss in the NIT

 - Year 3: Lose to the 4-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney

 - Year 4: Lose by 24pts to the 4-seed in the first round of the MAC tourney - after a sub .500 season

You cannot fault our fanbase for being completely pissed off at that downward spiral. He'll always be remembered as the guy who tanked our program.

Sorry I know this is getting off topic, but I still wonder to this day, would people's minds be different if COVID shut down year one five days earlier and the loss to #12 Miami never happened?

[DooleyBull06]

1 hour ago, BullBoy said:

Sorry I know this is getting off topic, but I still wonder to this day, would people's minds be different if COVID shut down year one five days earlier and the loss to #12 Miami never happened?

I almost don’t even count it. Plus the following year we made the MAC final. After that is when the cracks in the foundation began to show. Whitesell couldn’t win enough big games against the top conference teams. Which showed his inabilities to coach. And he brought in the wrong players. Whitesell inherited a championship caliber team and once he failed to do so in that window, it was a wrap.

[clodney]

1 hour ago, BullBoy said:

Sorry I know this is getting off topic, but I still wonder to this day, would people's minds be different if COVID shut down year one five days earlier and the loss to #12 Miami never happened?

It's a fair question. We wouldn't have felt the burn of our biggest failure in years.

To me it's all about expectations. We never won a MAC Championship in football with Lance Leipold but I don't think any of us would claim he was a failure. However, not getting a MAC Championship in any of the years we had Jeenathan, Segu, Mballa, and Skogman? That was unacceptable given where we were prior to Whitesell.

[enrique14150]

It's miserable to go on here and read, after game 1 of the new coach's tenure, people re-living what went wrong before this. It's done, move forward.

[Tee4three]

There was a time out last night after a big basket to tie the game or get with in a basket. I loved it 

Feel like we haven't had a celebratory kind of time out in a really long time where we try and put together another run. I always felt like our time outs were used to stop other teams runs 

[clodney]

1 hour ago, enrique14150 said:

It's miserable to go on here and read, after game 1 of the new coach's tenure, people re-living what went wrong before this. It's done, move forward.

Sorry but I can’t possibly ignore someone who calls us a “terrible fanbase” based on a bunch of Bull$hit.

[UBlearns]

Didn't see the game so I can't comment on it, but I will throw out there that I went to New Mexico's home opener last night (I'm out of town on business), and the gameday experience at The Pit compared to Alumni is night and day.

The arena is significantly nicer than Alumni.  Concessions are way better.  The team store is much nicer and better equipped.  The student section, while relatively small  and probably comparable in number to an average UB game, was raucous and loud.  I don't think they sat down for the entire game.  From the instant you enter the arena, you're not more than like 50 yards from the court....it just feels like a basketball atmosphere, it's compact and designed for maximum noise and excitement.

It wasn't all amazing, they had the same lame on-court promos during the commercial breaks.  UB's jumbotron is far nicer and I think UB's pregame player announcements/hype video is better.  But other than that, it was just such a pleasant experience compared to Alumni.  Alumni feels like you're in an on-campus gym that happens to have the basketball court in it (which is what it is)....at UNM, you're in an actual basketball-specific facility.  I know the Mountain West is a step-up above the MAC in basketball and football terms, but academically and in terms of university profile, these are UB's peers.  The gameday experience was a complete blowout.

Edited November 7, 2023 by UBlearns

[xDerekRx]

8 hours ago, enrique14150 said:

It's miserable to go on here and read, after game 1 of the new coach's tenure, people re-living what went wrong before this. It's done, move forward.

Welcome to the board. JK obviously. I just ignore at this point. Even in our glory years, just recently, people complained every game.

Im very excited about GHIII and watching him grow with the program. Whitsell was a status quo type hire and probably sufficient for MAC competitiveness. No bad things to say about him. He was him.

And the bad optics of the early hiring process, Ive forgotten about those almost immediately mostly because the GHIII hire had a lot of things that looked good on paper. Couldn't argue with any of it.

People are always going to bitch about coaching, losing to a "kenpom made up ranking bs team", the early season student section. They can enjoy doing that...

But all I came out of the FDU game with was hope and excitement to see what they look like next game. If anything they looked better than I expected.

[xDerekRx]

Ill just add in quickly that I liked a lot of what I saw last night.

FDU no way is a 300+ team. They returned almost the entire team that remembers what its like to beat a #1 seed. They don't just forget that. They are all better for that experience.

UB was supposed to be all over the map this season and in fact before the game I was feeling a possible loss in this fasion.

That FDU team probably couldn't wait to start playing Bball again this year after last season. Tons of confidence and a few of their guys certainly built on that.

As for us, its been said by many but really liked Smith's game. If hes a vacuum like that all year with the added range and touch, we have a stud on our hands all season.

Adams is who he is but Id say he looked even more under control. Also positive for this season.

[Chet]

On 11/6/2023 at 10:08 PM, Tee4three said:

In my opinion either UB is going to be very very bad or that FDU team isn't actually 309th team in the country 

Maybe option A

[Tee4three]

1 hour ago, Chet said:

Maybe option A

Yeah looking that way