I say surprising only in that they graduated almost everybody and were looking at a pretty bare cupboard, or so it seemed. Instead, they are the surprise team of the conference to date.
The first thing has been the play of PG Byron Mulkey. As noted in our Q&A with Bull Run, Coach Witherspoon redshirted him after his junior year, an unconventional move which seems to be paying off. With the players they had last year, you have to wonder how many minutes he would get anyway, and this year, he's been really good. He's leading the MAC in assist/turnover ratio and steals, is 2nd in offensive efficiency, 4th in assists, 5th in FT shooting, 7th in defensive rebounding and 9th in scoring. He's clearly a first-teamer right now, and last year, the Spoon might well have saved this season with this move.
Two players are certainly supporting Mulkey. One is Zach Filzen, another guy who kind of came out of nowhere, He transferred from Northern Arizona and averaged only 7 minutes per game last season. This year, he is Buffalo's leading scorer, leads the MAC in 3-point shooting (and at one point lead the nation but they have not played in a while, so he has fallen), is 6th in FG attempts, 6th in scoring, 8th in true shooting, and 8th in offensive efficiency. For a 3-point shooter to have that kind of efficiency is really rare. Of course, he is hitting 45% from beyond the arc. Only 15 players in the MAC are better than that on ALL their shots.
Speaking of shooting, the other surprise for the Bulls is Javon McCrea, who is an early contender for freshman of the year. He's shooting a ridiculous 69% from the field (leading the MAC) and also leads the conference in offensive rebounding. He's 3rd in offensive rebounding, 4th in blocks and FT rate, and 6th in overall rebounding. He's only 6'6" but appears to play a lot taller, and is a great recruit for Buffalo.
So, it is clear that there are three keys to the game right off the bat:
- Defend Filzen on the perimeter (Luke Kraus anyone?)
- Defend Mulkey on the point
- Win the paint battle with McCrea
- Show we can win on the road again
As a body of work this year, Buffalo is 8-4 against the country's 295th ranked schedule. Of course, BG is 5-9 against the country's 307th toughest schedule, so there you go. In my view, Buffalo has yet to get a defining win. They beat an OK Green Bay team in Buffalo, and they did play Brigham Young tough before losing, and except for a road loss to Youngstown State I think they don't have any bad losses, but I just don't see the "won the game you weren't supposed to" on their results.
As you can see on the four factors below, they are a very solid offensive team. They average 1.06 points per possession this year, which is really good. The best thing BG can do to stunt that is to get the ball away before they can shoot, which is something we have been good at. The zone should help, but at the same time, we can't let Filzen go crazy from outside either. In this sense, they look to be difficult to defend. As you can see, they are strong rebounders. We need a good tough game from Black, Calhoun, Oglesby and Thomas to keep them off the boards, and we need to keep them off the free throw line.
Most importantly, we need to bring the game we have brought over the past 2 weeks or so. When you look at BG's stats, they are impacted by a dreadful November. We need to score points close to the basket, make some outside shots when we need it, and get stops, especially with steals and turnovers. We need continuing contributions from our full roster, because we clearly do not have a player that can carry us every night.
If our play continues as it has recently, we are not that team and I think we can compete with most of the conference. If we fall back to the November level, or anything close, we're going to struggle to beat anybody in the conference.
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