BAD NEWS BULLS: BUFFALO BASKETBALL IS BREAKING BAD
BAD NEWS BULLS: BUFFALO BASKETBALL IS BREAKING BAD
Men's win streak snapped at four; depleted women's squad suffers third straight loss.
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It’s been a tough week for UB basketball.
Monday: The women’s team loses at Ohio, 68-66, closing out a winless two-game tour of the Buckeye state. The narrow defeat is compounded by an injury to senior forward Adebola Adeyeye, the blood and guts of Buffalo’s front court. Read about it here.
Tuesday: The men’s team misses a critical opportunity to put the Mid-American Conference on notice as league-leading Toledo outscores the visiting Bulls 23-13 over the final 10 minutes of the second half at Savage Arena en route to an 86-75 victory at Savage Arena.
Wednesday: Playing with essentially no bench—the lone reserve, Ramatoulaye Keita, logged nine minutes—due to the ongoing absence of starters Adeyeye, Cheyenne McEvans, and Jazmine Young, as well as depth reserve Nia Jordan, UB battles back from an 11-point deficit with 7:39 left in the game but can’t quite complete the climb, falling 72-70 to Ball State at home.
Let’s dig into the post-mortems.
TOSSING UP BRICKS IN THE GLASS CITY
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You’re not going to win many games shooting 37 percent from the field.
Or when you’re outscored in the paint by 14 points.
Or when you allow your opponent to score 16 points off turnovers.
Or when you let the other team shoot over 60 percent in the second half.
Or when three of your five starters combine to shoot 12-of-43 from the floor, as Buffalo’s Ronaldo Segu, Josh Mballa, and Maceo Jack did in the Bulls’ 86-75 loss at Toledo.
It was a game, until it wasn’t
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Despite the fundamental flaws in UB’s approach, this game was tied 41-41 at intermission, and Buffalo led as late as the 10:32 mark of the second half.
So what happened? Up 62-61, here’s what the Bulls (10-7 overall, 4-3 in MAC play) did on its next 10 possessions:
Missed three, Curtis Jones
Missed three, Segu
Missed jumper, Segu
Missed three, Segu
Missed layup, Jeenathan Williams
Missed jumper, Segu
Missed dunk, Mballa
Turnover, David Skogman
Made one of two free throws, Williams
Missed three, Skogman
Made jumper, Williams
Over that stretch—five minutes, with the game on the line—UB was outscored 15-3. The Rockets (16-4, 8-1) closed this midseason MAC title fight into a decisive late-round knockout.
From Kyle Rowland of The Toledo Blade:
“We knew we didn’t play that great in the first half, so we needed to pick up the energy,” said Ryan Rollins (pictured above), who scored a game-high 25 points with 11 rebounds, five assists, and four steals. “We had to create our own energy, which always starts on the defensive. We knew that was a big key for the second-half success. I think we did that, that’s how we came out with a [W].”
Where’s Skogman?
Image from ubbulls.com
From a fan’s perspective, part of the frustration comes from the fact that Skogman (pictured above)—a 6’10 sophomore who reeled off three consecutive double-doubles to start the Buffalo’s four-game MAC win streak after starting the league schedule with two flat losses—took only two shots in 27 minutes.
According to kenpom.com, Skogman is one of the most efficient offensive players in the country, and the most efficient two-point shooter in Division 1, but his usage rate is the lowest of any of the five starters—and it noticeably dropped back to 2021 levels when Mballa came back from a two-game COVID absence early in the new year.
If the argument is that Mballa (5-for-14 from the floor on Tuesday, 11 points, 14 boards on Tuesday) is somehow blocking Skogman’s development, that doesn’t cut it—it’s Head Coach Jim Whitesell’s job to maximize his team’s talent. If Whitesell has an all-MAC defensive player and legit offensive threat in Mballa plus a versatile, sharp-shooting big man like Skogman, it shouldn’t be a problem. That’s ridiculous.
Struggle Bulls
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Discount Segu’s miserable three-for-16 performance from the field. He’s rarely going to deliver that kind of stat line. Frankly, his two assists—three below his season average of five, good for 41st in the nation—were more disappointing on a night when the Bulls, the MAC leader in dimes at nearly 15 a game, only had 11 total helpers on 27 made field goals.
“Our defense probably doesn’t get enough credit over time,” Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk told The Toledo Blade. “Maybe it’s because our offense has been so good [and] people look at me like an offensive guy. How we recruit, we like to have guys who can pass and shoot, and sometimes you sacrifice a little bit on the defensive end. This year’s team has not sacrificed.”
The bigger question seems to be Jack, the swingman who transferred in from George Washington University and has been maddeningly inconsistent on the offensive end. He’s one-for-eight on three-point attempts (this after going through an 0-for-16 slump earlier in the season) and four-for-17 from the floor over the past two games. He turned the ball over four times against Toledo and hasn’t been to the free throw line since Jan. 5.
Burn the tape, look ahead
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It was a bad game. You learn from it, you bounce back. For now, UB is fourth in the MAC, behind Toledo, Akron, and Ohio, and—for what it’s worth—kenpom.com doesn’t see the Blue and White losing a game until March 1, when Toledo comes to Alumni Arena.
But guess who’s coming to town next?
Buffalo hosts the Ohio Bobcats (15-3, 6-1) on Friday at 7 p.m. and can wash away the bad taste from the Rockets’ loss with a victory over sharpshooting Ben Vander Plas (pictured above) and a very dangerous OU squad. The ‘Cats are coming off a 74-62 win over NIU, their own palette-cleanser after getting smoked by Toledo, 87-69, at the Convocation Center last Friday.
Having lost to both the Rockets and Akron, it would be nice to prove that the Bulls belong with the big boys. Let’s hope they figure it out.
The game can be viewed on ESPNU.
NO BENCH, BIG PROBLEMS FOR THE UB WOMEN
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Six players logged minutes for Buffalo in Wednesday’s 72-70 loss to Ball State, marking the first home loss of the season and third defeat in a row.
And yet, for the second consecutive game, despite everything that could go wrong going wrong, the Bulls (11-7, 5-3) were two contested layups away from overtime.
From UBBulls.com:
For the second straight game, the University at Buffalo women's basketball team had a chance to tie the game on the final possession but a pair of contested layups from Georgia Woolley (pictured above) and Summer Hemphill came up short as the Bulls fell 72-70 to Ball State at Alumni Arena on Wednesday night. With the loss, the Bulls drop to 11-7 overall and 5-3 in league play.
Woolley led all scorers with a career-high 24 points, including three triples and 7-of-7 shooting from the charity stripe, to go along with five rebounds, four assists and three steals. Junior guard Dyaisha Fair also had a solid performance, scoring 22 points to go with four rebounds and five assists. Junior forward Loren Christie recorded a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds and Hemphill just missed that mark with eight points and 10 rebounds.
Quick notes on this one:
Image from ubbulls.com
UB was missing senior forward Adebola Adeyeye, who’d been playing her best basketball of the year in January. It’s uncertain when she will be back. The same can be said for Cheyenne McEvans, Jazmine Young, and Nia Jordan. That’s a combined 37 starts that have disappeared from Head Coach Felisha Legette-Jack’s scorecard.
Let’s hear it for Loren Christie (pictured above), the junior forward more accustomed to coming off the bench. Christie started, played 40 minutes, scored 11 points and had 10 rebounds for her second double-double in four games. She was also the emotional heart and soul of the team, staying fired up even when Buffalo got down, and was the first to hit the deck to battle for possession. Hell of a game from Christie. Hell of a game.
I posited on Twitter that Dyaisha Fair may have been in her own head in the first half—she was missing layups, making careless passes, rimming jumpers, and generally slumping the way she has for the past four games. To her credit, Fair did what true scorers do—she kept firing away, and ended up with 22 points on seven-for-20 shooting. Not pretty, but, by the end of the game, there was a sense the old Fair was coming back.
Freshman Georgia Woolley scored a career-high 24 points. Not super-efficient— seven-for-17—but she did collect 12 first-quarter points when Ball State looked ready to turn the game into a three-point competition. Woolley, like Fair, has a sense of basketball stoicism that gives you confidence when they have the ball.
Tough game for forward Summer Hemphill, who was four-of-13 from the field for eight points and 10 rebounds. Just wasn’t her night. It happens, even to a program legend like Hemphill.
The messed-up thing about this game: In the waning seconds of the first half, point guard Dominique Camp (seven assists) stole a pass, cut to the left elbow, threw a dart to Ramatoulaye Keita under the bucket, and the redshirt sophomore couldn’t convert the layup. Ball State’s Ally Becki grabbed the loose ball, cut to mid-court, and buried a 75-foot jumper at the buzzer.
As it turned out, that was, in a way, the game-winning shot. The Cardinals improved to 12-7 overall, 5-4 in the MAC, and Buffalo was left to wonder what if.
“We can’t leave anything in anybody’s hands but ours,” Legette-Jack told Rachel Lenzi of The Buffalo News. “If we keep it close, it can go either way. Tonight, it went the other way. I thought we had a tremendous comeback, but we shouldn’t have put ourselves in a hole like that. So it’s not about the fourth quarter. It’s about first quarter, the second quarter or the third quarter, and a culmination of that results into the fourth quarter."
There’s no doubt the Bulls will get better as they get healthier, but in the meantime, basketball can be a cruel sport.
“I feel grateful that we’re going through this,” Legette-Jack concluded. “I know this is going to become something big. So we’ve got to stay steadfast and stay unmovable. We’ve got to trust that process. It’s not supposed to be easy but it’s supposed to be something that we’re going to endure so that we can be better for it. At this time, it’s not fun. It’s not easy.”
Up Next
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Northern Illinois (7-9, 4-4) visits on Saturday at 2 p.m. The game from Alumni Arena can be viewed on ESPN3. And, for the love of God, no one better get hurt. Salt those sidewalks, UB!