Buffalo Basketball: Bulls are a dark horse for the Elite Eight

At 31-3 overall and 12-0 over the last five weeks, Nate Oats’ Buffalo basketball team will be entering the Big Dance as one of the hottest teams.

As the No. 6 seed in a region that has three of the top nine teams on KenPom, Buffalo will certainly have their work cut out for them. It’s not for nothing, though, that they’ve become a popular dark-horse pick to reach the Elite Eight. The star of the show has obviously been CJ Massinburg, the guard from Dallas who’s averaging 18.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. Unlike some of the other teams in the West Region, (eg. Marquette and Murray State), though, Buffalo is far from a one-man army.

Coach Oats has seven players to work with that average at least 5.8 points per game, and five among that group are seniors that will be hard to rattle in a playoff atmosphere. Massinburg’s most notable sidekick is his senior classmate Nick Perkins, a 6-foot-8 power forward that can out-rebound better than most on the floor and averages 14.4 points per game. Jeremy Harris, who most recently dropped 31 in the MAC Tournament final, can also just as easily impose his will on defenses.

Murphy’s Law will almost certainly take 6 seed (or two) out of this tournament early, but the Bulls’ leadership, momentum, and experience should be enough to see them past Arizona State and into the round of 32. Chris Beard’s Texas Tech would presumably be on deck, and that’s a coin-flip game for the most part, but I still like the more well-rounded Bulls to control the pace, limit Jarrett Culver, and come out on top.

Michigan, provided they get past Montana and Nevada/Florida, would be a tough beat in the Sweet Sixteen, but I wouldn’t automatically sharpie them in as winners either. This is a younger and more inconsistent Michigan team than we’ve become accustomed to seeing of late, and they’ve shown their mortality with losses to the likes of Penn St. and Iowa. I am not suggesting that you should find the nearest bookie and put money down on the Bulls – I do think this is the end of the road for them – but I am saying that it shouldn’t come as a surprise if they are able to pull off the upset.

It’s easy to write off Buffalo as the bullies of a “soft” conference (in actuality, the MAC finished at a solid 9th place on KenPom), but the bottom line is that this team beat Syracuse on the road, is the 14th most experienced team in the country (not just in the Tournament), and has the type of offensive firepower to keep up with anybody. In other words, if you’re realizing that what your bracket is missing is a middle-seeded team making a deep run, the red hot Bulls are a prime candidate to fill that void.