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Buffalo Basketball Program Update

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Witherspoon builds a tradition at Buffalo

A tradition of winning is a phrase thrown around by sportswriters often to describe programs that win on a year-to-year basis, regardless of changes within the program (i.e. player graduation, declaring for NBA, coaching change).  For the longest time since their move to Division I, the University at Buffalo Bulls basketball program was severely lacking in this department - in fact they had a tradition of losing every year, that is until the arrival of Reggie Witherspoon on the UB campus in 2000.  Since NCAA sanctions (incurred by the previous coaching staff) were lifted, the Bulls have compiled a 65-41 record (including this season), played in the MAC championship game, secured an NIT berth, and followed that season up with a 19-win season despite the losses of All-American Turner Battle, MAC Sixth Man Mark Bortz, lock-down defender Danny Gilbert and sharpshooter Jason Bird.

Following last year's 19-win season and the departure of the rest of the "core" from the Bulls MAC Championship game appearance, including 2nd team All-MAC scorer Calvin Cage, many expected the Bulls to be in a "rebuilding" mode this year with freshman and sophomores playing a majority of the minutes.  While the latter is true (freshman & sophomores are playing 70% of minutes), the Bulls look to be far from in rebuilding mode.  They are off to a 6-2 start, mostly thanks to their smothering defensive play (opponents averaging 66 ppg), and the emergence of sophomores Eric Moore, Greg Gamble, and Andy Robinson. This group is the next "core" of UB players and while the previous group also played a ton of minutes early in their careers, they were unable to have the same success (in Turner Battle's sophomore year underclassmen plaid 80% of minutes and they went 5-23 that year) at such an early stage, thus it could be argued reasonably that Reggie has upgraded his "core" from the previous group.  Coach 'Spoon has done a great job of getting these guys to buy into playing aggressive, attacking defense.  These three have also helped shoulder the scoring load with forwards Yassin Idbihi and Parnell Smith regularly commanding double and triple-teams.  While UB has had trouble shooting the ball from outside, they have shown signs of late that the shooting is starting to work itself out and returning to more respectable figures. This is a team that can win a game with it's defense and will continue to lean on it while working out the kinks in the offense. The Bulls look to be on track for anywhere from a 15 to 20+ win season.  A major coup considering most MAC programs (outside of Miami and Kent) simply cannot sustain the losses that Buffalo has without taking a major step backwards.  

By Kevin Gatley, Buffalo Sports Beat Writer for VanDelaySports.com

published 12.06.2006

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