Fans of the men's basketball team are checking their calendars, as March is drawing near, and asking when the team is going to start winning.
The heavily hyped Bulls have struggled in conference play lately, falling below .500 in the MAC with a close loss to Kent State last week.
Tuesday night at home against Northern Illinois, the team hopes to regroup.
The Bulls (10-5 overall, 3-4 Mid-American Conference) defeated the Huskies (6-9 overall, 2-5 MAC) in the first round of the MAC playoffs last year at Alumni Arena. This year, the Huskies bring the same offensive strategy but feature better execution.
"They are a very good three-point shooting team," said Bulls' head coach Reggie Witherspoon.
The term "good," may be an understatement, as Northern Illinois is shooting 41.1 percent from beyond the arc so far this season, including 7.9 made three point field goals per game.
In contrast, the Bulls are shooting just 35 percent from the land of plenty, and make one and a half fewer three-point shots per game than do the Huskies.
In order to contain the Huskies, the Bulls will have to make improvements on defense and keep the Huskies from taking spot-up three point shots.
"We have to get our pressure and make sure they put the ball on the floor," said Witherspoon. "We don't want them to just catch and shoot the ball."
The Bulls come off a very tough loss at Kent State, where they took the Golden Flashes to overtime, and nearly handed the Golden Flashes their first home loss of the season.
"We've ended some home win streaks, and we wanted to do that on Wednesday night, but we didn't play well enough to finish the job and we know that," said Witherspoon.
The biggest problem area for the Bulls on Wednesday night was their rebounding, an aspect of the game that was solid for the majority of the contest, but ultimately broke down towards the end of the game.
"I just think that we didn't have the right mental approach going into it, they went into the glass hard, and conversely we didn't," Witherspoon said. "We didn't get enough offensive rebounds and that hurt us in the end."
To compete against NIU, Buffalo will need to improve its offensive rebounding to keep the deadly aim of the Huskies' Todd Peterson and Anthony Maestranzi in check. Both Peterson and Maestranzi are shooting over 40 percent from three-point range, and Peterson is averaging just over 10 points per game.
Despite a solid perimeter game, Northern Illinois does not have much of a post presence. In order to ensure victory, UB will have to slow down the pace of the game and pound the ball inside to big men Yassin Idbihi, Mark Bortz and Mario Jordan.
UB is 7-1 this year when at least two of its three big men score in double digits, with the lone loss coming against Kent State last Wednesday night.
"I think that we've got to take an approach that says, we have to empower ourselves more, take the approach that the players on the floor will decide the game no matter what," he said. "That's the way we're going to survive in this conference."
UB certainly aims to do more than just survive in the Mid-American Conference, as the Bulls were projected to finish first in the MAC East this season.
So far this season, the Bulls are led in scoring by Turner Battle's 14.9 points per game. The senior point guard is also averaging 4.8 assists per game. Three other Bulls are each averaging over ten points per game - Bortz, Idbihi and Calvin Cage.
To beat the Huskies on Tuesday, the Bulls will need positive offensive production as well as positive defensive production from all of their top guns. Tip off is slated for 7 p.m. at Alumni Arena.
