Posts under ‘college basketball’

Somehow, someway, for reasons that completely escape me, Cornell got nary a 1st place vote in the latest Mid-Major Top 25 poll. Obviously, the Mid-Major Top 25 has just about zero relevance and gets as much attention on the national scene as does an NJIT scrimmage, but still… If the Big Red can’t get [...]

Eastern Michigan scored another win for the formerly downtrodden MAC West tonight, upsetting Akron 62-59 at James Rhodes Arena in Akron. Not exactly sure how the Eagles, last seen getting run out of Miami’s Millet Hall in a nationally televised game Saturday, pulled this one out, but judging from the box score, the Zips [...]

The Big Picture: Defensively-challenged University of Bulls allow very average Western Michigan side that was coming off a two-game losing streak to shoot 60% from the field on their way to a 85-70 rout of UB. The loss, Buffalo’s third in their last four games, has the Bulls back in the middle of [...]

Pound-for-pound, Ricardo Patton’s Northern Illinois Huskies might be the most talented team in the MAC. There’s little doubt that junior guard/wings Darion “Jake” Anderson and Xavier Silas are two of the more explosive players on the offensive side of the court in the MAC. While not among the league’s best soph point Mike [...]

To anyone that had the misfortune of being at Rose Arena tonight for Central Michigan playing host to Ball State. I didn’t see the game, but the final box yields me to conclude that the Chippewas’ 53-38 win set basketball back about 3000 years. The ancient Mayan ballgame had to have more artistry [...]

Fear the Roo my ass!
Sunday’s rematch of the 2009 MAC tournament final represents the Buffalo Bulls first chance to gain a measure of redemption for their 65-53 loss to the Zips in Clevo. Put simply, this is THE statement game for Coach ‘Spoon’s squad in January.
Rodney Pierce and Co. are 5-1 in [...]

The Big Picture: Bulls take care of business, leading from buzzer-to-buzzer in 93-65 win over D3 Buffalo State in what we call the Youngman Expressway Derby. The win, UB’s second in a row, improves the Bulls record to 5-3 on the season. With a nine day break for Fall semester finals before [...]

The Week That Was: As the 2009-10 non-league portion of the season winds down for MAC teams, this week will be remembered as the week that MAC sides made it clear that this is a league for welterweights not heavyweights nor cruiserweights nor even middleweights. Several opportunities to notch the type of emphatic, [...]

Dereck Whittenburg sacked
I have to admit that I’m pretty surprised that Dereck Whittenburg wasn’t able to right the sinking ship that is the Fordham basketball program. Given his playing pedigree and the respectable job he did at Wagner on Staten Island — by no means even one of the Northeast Conference’s glamor programs — [...]

With a 5-2 record and wins against a pretty good UAB team, a decent Samford side, and a Morehead State team that has to be considered a favorite in the Ohio Valley, I thought Kent State had as good a chance of beating Xavier in Cincinnati tonight as does the United States of advancing to [...]

Beating a Virginia Military Institute (3-3) team that has beaten only one D1 team so far this season and lost 103-59 to Richmond isn’t on it’s face, all that an impressive a win. However, when you come into that game, played at VMI’s gym, with an offense that plays at a pace that can [...]

The Big Picture: Buffalo overcomes start of game siesta and countless ineffectual stretches on offense to overcome what seems to be a decent Army

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Ever wonder MAC refs suck huge, fat elephant balls? The Buffalo News Bob DiCesare has the answer:
Mid-American Conference officials worked the game, which explains a lot. The league’s pay is low scale and there’s no reimbursement for expenses incurred. Therefore, the MAC gets officials who can’t get many games elsewhere. The officiating in the [...]

A few college hoops seasons ago, we started doing almost weekly power rankings for MAC basketball. As pointless as it may seem to be doing power rankings for a conference that’s currently 17th-best*, we had fun with it, and it was a great way to understand the state of MAC hoops on a weekly [...]

For another BCS league scalp that is.
Mike Young’s Terriers, who have already won at Georgia and nearly knocked off Pitt, are within striking distance against Illinois, trailing 58-50 with about 10:00 to play.
Like always, it’d help if the road ‘dogs from the Mid-Majors could get a call, but Wofford’s played through the [...]

The Big Picture: Bulls can claim mantle as the best team in Mobtown, after surviving overtime scrap with an experienced Towson to emerge victorious 78-69. Coach ‘Spoon’s squad stands at 2-1 and seems to be officially over both woulda, shoulda, coulda, opening loss to Vermont and slopfest of a win at Navy. [...]

The Big Picture: Bulls survive a knife fight of a basketball with Navy, winning 63-53 at Alumni Hall in Annapolis. Coach ‘Spoon’s squad overcame a myriad of maladies, including turnovers on five consecutive possessions in the first half (UB had 22 of them… 22!), missed free throws (UB finished 16-of-25), and three-point shooting [...]

Four MAC teams took the floor on Wednesday night and three finished the night with wins. For a league — currently rated 24th by Ken Pomeroy — that needs to start racking up OOC dubbyas, this is, well, only kind of good news.
Of Wednesday’s wins, only one, Western Michigan defending their turf in a [...]

Junior guard Roderick Pearson and the Golden Eagles handed Stanford its second loss of the season to a team from the Mid-Major ranks
May not keep the doctor away, but it might very well be the biggest reason why I watch college hoops.
For the second time this season, Stanford has been beaten by a team hailing [...]

Score one for the good guys!
I’ve managed to catch some sort of nutty bacterial infection that has inflated my schnozz to Jimmy Durante-like proportions that is contagious on the very same day that ESPN’s 24 hour college hoops marathon tipped off. My doctor said I needed to stay home for a couple days so [...]

The Big Picture: Is it winter already? Bulls start the 2009-10 season with a shooting performance so frigid that it made John Starks’ 2-for-18 night in game seven of the 1994 NBA Finals seem, ummm, not so bad. Given that UB shot only 44% in their exhibition win over Daemen, it shouldn’t [...]

While there a few scores on the first Friday of the college hoops season — Rider thumping 19th-ranked Mississippi State, San Diego knocking off Stanford, the Idaho Vandals pillaging Utah — the result that almost shocked me enough to put down my beer, turn the LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo clash for the MLS [...]

The big question about the MAC West this season is whether anyone other than those with a close — i.e. friends and family — relationship to coaches and players in the league should really care what happens. And, to be honest, I don’t know that anybody else should. The six sides in [...]

March Madness All Season is one of my favorite college hoops blogs for the simple reason that Jeff seems to know his stuff and is not a power conference sycophant. All the more reason that I’m puzzled by his labeling teams like Butler, Siena, Creighton, Virginia Commonwealth, and Western Kentucky as “Mid-Major Sleepers.”
The only [...]

With the release of the 2009-10 University of Buffalo basketball schedule, one of the best kept secrets in college basketball is no longer a secret. Judging by the lack of non-league home games — the Bulls have a mere four on their 28-game schedule, one of which is a visit to Alumni Arena [...]