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Topic: Official Game 17 Thread: Buffalo
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Ted Thompson
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Posted: 1/7/2026 10:55 AM

Use this thread to talk about anything game-related. For away games, we'll have a separate travel thread.

Date: Saturday January 10th, 2026 2:00 PM

Opponent: Buffalo  (13-2, 3-0 MAC)

Site: Convocation Center

TV/Webcast: ESPN+

Radio: The Varsity Network App (free) 

Buffalo statistics, roster and media guide

Buffalo message board:    UBFan.com

Follow Ohio Football recruiting on the BobcatAttack.com football recruiting database.

M.D.W.S.T
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Posted: 1/7/2026 11:58 AM
Looking to win our 9th in 10 games.

Not bad for a team left for dead by most of this board three weeks ago.
colobobcat66
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Posted: 1/7/2026 12:53 PM
M.D.W.S.T wrote:expand_more
Looking to win our 9th in 10 games.

Not bad for a team left for dead by most of this board three weeks ago.
I don’t know about dead, but I had them badly wounded.
Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Posted: 1/7/2026 12:53 PM
M.D.W.S.T wrote:expand_more
Looking to win our 9th in 10 games.

Not bad for a team left for dead by most of this board three weeks ago.
If you look at the Prediction thread, the team is basically exactly where everybody expected them to be.

We're 9-7. The average of the predictions in the prediction thread through the UMass game is 9.6 - 6.4.

Basically we're slightly worse than expected, but only very slightly.

Every basketball season is about whether we're better than the top of the MAC. We've got to be able to beat BG, Akron, Toledo, Buffalo, Kent, and Miami consistently or the team is actually dead.
GoCats105
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Posted: 1/7/2026 1:58 PM
M.D.W.S.T wrote:expand_more
Looking to win our 9th in 10 games.

Not bad for a team left for dead by most of this board three weeks ago.
Left for dead or too lofty expectations? I'll definitely say I thought we should be better than what we are given the talent we brought in. But after the evidence we've seen, maybe Boals got a little too big for his britches with the schedule.
bobcatsquared
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Posted: 1/7/2026 2:58 PM
Maybe that was Boals' diabolical plan all along - tank the early part of the season to get a low NET rating and therefore a lower level Sun Belt opponent for the second leg of the MAC-SBC Challenge. Well played, if so.
GoCats105
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Posted: 1/7/2026 4:43 PM
To my somewhat untrained eye, these guys have played almost nobody of value yet. They've lost to St. Bonaventure (who Ohio beat) and East Carolina (who is terrible). They did beat DePaul on the road, but they might not be very good. Their best win? Take your pick, I guess.

Southern Miss (191, KenPom)
Green Bay (243)
DePaul (108)
Vermont (186)
VMI (333)
Bucknell (312)
Canisius (338)
UMBC (267)

Three wins in MAC play against WMU, NIU and Ball State, who are a combined 15-30 overall.

Send these nerds home crying.
bobcat 2000
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Posted: 1/7/2026 5:02 PM
if they make it to the ncaa tournament they need to hope they dont draw ohio state or kansas. akron looks to be the mac team in the ncaa where theyll probably lose in first game.
bobcatsquared
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Posted: 1/7/2026 5:42 PM
GoCats105 wrote:expand_more
To my somewhat untrained eye, these guys have played almost nobody of value yet. They've lost to St. Bonaventure (who Ohio beat) and East Carolina (who is terrible). They did beat DePaul on the road, but they might not be very good. Their best win? Take your pick, I guess.

Southern Miss (191, KenPom)
Green Bay (243)
DePaul (108)
Vermont (186)
VMI (333)
Bucknell (312)
Canisius (338)
UMBC (267)

Three wins in MAC play against WMU, NIU and Ball State, who are a combined 15-30 overall.

Send these nerds home crying.
Definitely the DePaul win. Holtzman is slowly turning around the Blue Demons program, winning two straight Big East games v. Xavier and Georgetown. They held Georgetown to 1 field goal in the second half last night - unheard of in the shot-clock era.

Edit: I have no idea what point bobcat 2000 is trying to make, per usual. I will say this for him - he is consistent with his posts.
Last Edited: 1/7/2026 5:44:01 PM by bobcatsquared
greencat
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Posted: 1/8/2026 9:23 AM
Sort of Buffalo related....

Did Oats ever have a hissy fit there like he had in Bama's game last night?

It reminded me of Nick Nolte in "Blue Chips" and he should have been ejected.
CatsUp
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Posted: 1/8/2026 11:36 AM
With university housed students returning the next few days and a 2:00 PM start I’m hopeful for a good crowd for this game. Of course, the team seemingly on the upswing doesn’t hurt either.
GoCats105
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Posted: 1/8/2026 5:48 PM
Bobcat1998
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Posted: 1/9/2026 7:25 AM
GoCats105 wrote:expand_more
Why are not talking more about Walking Bucket? How does he not have his own thread after the last game? Do you think it was an anomaly and a one-off or will Burris legit be a contributing (may I dare say "Key) member of this team? I say "YESSIR!!!!"

He reminds me of Travis Wilkins from Snow College who we had many moons ago. T-Wilk was a veteran who would come off the bench and hit 3's and was sneaky athletic too on pull-up jumpers and backdoor cuts. I am not saying Burris is there yet but I would be fine if that happened. The situation is also similar. Wilkins had expanded minutes when Rico Johnson was injured early in the season with a torn ACL. Man I hate thinking what could have been with that group. DARN YOU JIM CHRISTIAN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGfcQMQn4s&t=39s
CatsUp
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Posted: 1/9/2026 9:55 AM
Bobcat1998 wrote:expand_more
What is Buffalo sucks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9fdOiOIaT8
Why are not talking more about Walking Bucket? How does he not have his own thread after the last game? Do you think it was an anomaly and a one-off or will Burris legit be a contributing (may I dare say "Key) member of this team? I say "YESSIR!!!!"

He reminds me of Travis Wilkins from Snow College who we had many moons ago. T-Wilk was a veteran who would come off the bench and hit 3's and was sneaky athletic too on pull-up jumpers and backdoor cuts. I am not saying Burris is there yet but I would be fine if that happened. The situation is also similar. Wilkins had expanded minutes when Rico Johnson was injured early in the season with a torn ACL. Man I hate thinking what could have been with that group. DARN YOU JIM CHRISTIAN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGfcQMQn4s&t=39s
I like Burris and wish he had received more playing time earlier if his health was such that he could. I think his current situation is that he is in the process of building in-game trust with Boals. Do I think this process should have happened sooner? Yes, I do (again, if he’s were healthy). However, I’m a fan and observer, not a coach.

Regarding the UMass game, after someone off the bench goes off early I am usually all in on giving that player major minutes in the second half. However, because of the reasons given here I was kind of OK with how it turned out. I do really think he has a good shot at being a key contributor sooner than later.

I also, even though he’s not performed quite as well of late, think that Kuany needs to (continue to?) play 4-8 minutes a game. There are other reasons for it, including his development, but I was impressed with our physicality and performance down the stretch and, in my opinion, having fresher players made a difference in that regard.
Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Posted: 1/9/2026 10:31 AM
It's honestly a little baffling based on how Burris played vs. UMass that Boals has had such a short leash with him so far this season. He only saw 10+ minutes in either 1) blowouts or 2) games against D3 opponents.

In actual competitive games (i.e. where his minutes weren't just garbage time) where he's appeared (Illinois State, Marshall, and Eastern) he averaged 4 minutes per game.

Those minutes were going largely to Elliott otherwise who has been our worst player by a pretty fair margin. Elliott's PER is 7.3, his true shooting percentage is 38%, and his turnover rate is 16.3%. Just awful numbers. He's unplayable.

Add to that the fact that he is shooting 23% from three and ruins our spacing, and it's pretty hard to understand how it took an injury to Elliott to get Burris 17 minutes of playing time in a game that mattered.

Shooting and spacing is such an obvious issue for this team that you have to test lineup options to address that. Weird that Boals wasn't.
spongeBOB CATpants
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Posted: 1/9/2026 10:42 AM
Burris' biggest weakness is his speed/quickness, in turn hurts his defensive capabilities. Its surfaced a few times but I think his limited minutes has somewhat kept it from boiling over. If he can consistently hit shots then he obviously needs to be out there but I think defense is why he hasn't seen more minutes. If we have Pav and Burris on the floor at the same time, I'm going right at them just to see if they are able to stop it.
SBH
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Posted: 1/9/2026 10:42 AM
Agree, but I've watched opposing guards blast by Sheldon, Elliott and (sadly) Kelly all year.
Last Edited: 1/9/2026 10:56:50 AM by SBH
GoCats105
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Posted: 1/9/2026 10:47 AM
Bobcat1998 wrote:expand_more
What is Buffalo sucks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9fdOiOIaT8
Why are not talking more about Walking Bucket? How does he not have his own thread after the last game? Do you think it was an anomaly and a one-off or will Burris legit be a contributing (may I dare say "Key) member of this team? I say "YESSIR!!!!"

He reminds me of Travis Wilkins from Snow College who we had many moons ago. T-Wilk was a veteran who would come off the bench and hit 3's and was sneaky athletic too on pull-up jumpers and backdoor cuts. I am not saying Burris is there yet but I would be fine if that happened. The situation is also similar. Wilkins had expanded minutes when Rico Johnson was injured early in the season with a torn ACL. Man I hate thinking what could have been with that group. DARN YOU JIM CHRISTIAN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGfcQMQn4s&t=39s
There's already a thread my dude.

https://www.bobcatattack.com/messageboard/topic.asp?FromP...
Bobcat1998
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Posted: 1/9/2026 11:06 AM
spongeBOB CATpants wrote:expand_more
Burris' biggest weakness is his speed/quickness, in turn hurts his defensive capabilities. Its surfaced a few times but I think his limited minutes has somewhat kept it from boiling over. If he can consistently hit shots then he obviously needs to be out there but I think defense is why he hasn't seen more minutes. If we have Pav and Burris on the floor at the same time, I'm going right at them just to see if they are able to stop it.
I hear what you're saying but other than Kelly and maybe Sheldon, this team is fairly terrible defensively. Why are we pointing out Burris when Captain Chaos and Pavs are Olay defenders?
Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Posted: 1/9/2026 11:10 AM
spongeBOB CATpants wrote:expand_more
Burris' biggest weakness is his speed/quickness, in turn hurts his defensive capabilities. Its surfaced a few times but I think his limited minutes has somewhat kept it from boiling over. If he can consistently hit shots then he obviously needs to be out there but I think defense is why he hasn't seen more minutes. If we have Pav and Burris on the floor at the same time, I'm going right at them just to see if they are able to stop it.
No doubt that's the case. Just hard for me to understand a team with such crippling spacing issues optimizing for perimeter defense for all 40 minutes. Especially since we're far from elite as a defensive team. We're in the bottom third in the nation in basically every defensive category that matters.
spongeBOB CATpants
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Posted: 1/9/2026 11:20 AM
SBH wrote:expand_more
Agree, but I've watched opposing guards blast by Sheldon, Elliott and (sadly) Kelly all year.
You're not wrong and why I agree Burris should get a shot at more time.
Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Posted: 1/9/2026 11:31 AM
spongeBOB CATpants wrote:expand_more
Agree, but I've watched opposing guards blast by Sheldon, Elliott and (sadly) Kelly all year.
You're not wrong and why I agree Burris should get a shot at more time.
I don't want to over-index on the UMass game, especially given UMass can't defend and it's not some feather in our cap that our best offensive game was against them. But. . .

Our rotation does not make sense without more shooting. You could see it in how teams have started to defend us. Teams have been consistently sending two guys to help in the paint vs. Simmons because they do not care about giving Hadaway/ Elliott open 3s, and Sheldon is not good off-the-ball.

When you don't have either Conners or Burris in the rotation, we're far too easy to defend.

Even if Elliott is healthy, he has to be the odd man out and we have to figure out how to make a Sheldon/Conners/Burris combo work.
Last Edited: 1/9/2026 11:31:57 AM by Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
Deciduous Forest Cat
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Posted: 1/9/2026 11:41 AM
Bobcat1998 wrote:expand_more
Burris' biggest weakness is his speed/quickness, in turn hurts his defensive capabilities. Its surfaced a few times but I think his limited minutes has somewhat kept it from boiling over. If he can consistently hit shots then he obviously needs to be out there but I think defense is why he hasn't seen more minutes. If we have Pav and Burris on the floor at the same time, I'm going right at them just to see if they are able to stop it.
I hear what you're saying but other than Kelly and maybe Sheldon, this team is fairly terrible defensively. Why are we pointing out Burris when Captain Chaos and Pavs are Olay defenders?
I've always been a L'Oreal man myself.
bobcatsquared
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Posted: 1/9/2026 1:01 PM
Bobcat1998 wrote:expand_more
I hear what you're saying but other than Kelly and maybe Sheldon, this team is fairly terrible defensively. Why are we pointing out Burris when Captain Chaos and Pavs are Olay defenders?
I would add Kelly and Sheldon, one a frosh and the other a 4-year program player, to OUr list of players that struggle stopping dribble penetration.
Recovering Journalist
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Posted: 1/9/2026 1:45 PM
colobobcat66 wrote:expand_more
Looking to win our 9th in 10 games.

Not bad for a team left for dead by most of this board three weeks ago.
I don’t know about dead, but I had them badly wounded.
They're obviously playing a lot better but I'd still be surprised to see them win a single game in Cleveland in March. I'll feel differently if they can win against the top half of the conference.
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