Buffalo Basketball loses another quality coach to a power conference program. Can the Bulls remain an elite mid-major team?
The last few seasons Buffalo Basketball have been a team on the rise in the MAC and in the country. They were ranked as high as 14 in the nation on three separate occasions. They ended up earning themselves a six seed in the NCAA tournament, but they were ousted by the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the second round. This leads me to think after crushing Arizona 89-68 in 2018 and again this season finishing 32-4 and making the second round, could they be the next VCU or Wichita State?
To be short in the answer no I do not think they will. They had a great coach in Bobby Hurley who recruited most of the kids on this team. Then Nate Oats came in and developed them. Now both are gone with Hurley coaching Arizona State who the Bulls beat in the first round this year, and now Oats left to coach Alabama and Kira Lewis Jr.
They are also losing their top three scorers and rebounders. All three of C.J. Massinburg, Nick Perkins, and Dontay Caruthers are gone not to mention key roles players as well. They do have a couple important players returning to Buffalo in, Jayvon Graves and Jeenathan Williams who is a former 4-star recruit out of New York. Although I do think that they have some good players I do not think they have the carry-over of the likes of other mid-major programs such as Wichita State, Creighton, or VCU.
Then there is the other issue with Buffalo, they do not have the ability to move conferences as the other three did. Creighton was able to move to the Big East, Wichita State to the AAC, and VCU was able to move to the A-10. One thing all of those programs have in common is that they are really one sport schools. You do not hear about really any other sports from any of those schools with the exception of maybe Wichita State and baseball.
Buffalo has another sport that they are very good at, football. Buffalo was very good this season and even have their quarterback going to make an effort to get into the NFL. They can not just up and move into say the Big East because they have more than one sport to think about. They would completely jeopardize the future of that program for another. If they were somehow able to like Creighton or any of the others to move, and be able to recruit at a higher level, because let’s face it recruits are not awed by the chance to play in the MAC over the Big East.
Now more in regard to recruiting. Where are most of the top prospects playing now? They are in big-name prep schools such as Montverde, Oak Hill, or even Bishop Gorman none of those schools are even relatively close to Buffalo. That could cause an issue for them getting some of those 3 and 4-star recruits. Buffalo sometimes is able to produce a top of the line recruit or even the state of New York as a whole, but then Buffalo has to worry about the other big D-1 school in the state in Syracuse.
If I was a recruit and was asked where I wanted to play between those two schools it is not even a question I would be going to Syracuse. So not only does Buffalo face a geographical recruiting problem they also have to deal with the bullies in Syracuse who take the recruits when they come to the area.
Although Buffalo has had multiple good seasons in a row I would look for them to just be distinctly average in the years coming. Although I think they will always be competitive in the MAC that is not the conference they need to be in to make them advance to a major impact team. Buffalo has to take a step back and decide would they rather have two sports that are average, or one that is always making a run at the NCAA tournament.