There were plenty of good seats available at some local college basketball games this season. By Budd Bailey It’s a good time to examine the just completed local men’s basketball season. While the NCAA tournament is about to take over the spotlight nationally – including six games right here in Buffalo - there’s still time to poke at the year closer to home.   It wasn’t a particularly encouraging season in most ways. Canisius showed a little life this season going 10-21, 5-15

By Budd Bailey Sometimes it helps when your best players are your best players. Take the Buffalo Bandits, for example. “The Dhane and Josh Show,” sometimes associated with a talk show shown on YouTube, were in Oscar-winning form on the field Friday night as the Bandits defeated the Colorado Mammoth 13-10 before a sellout crowd in the KeyBank Center. Dhane Smith and Josh Byrne both had four goals and five assists for nine points, and were the dominant players on the field. It

Around the local basketball community, people figured Benjamin Bill wouldn’t be back at Daemen this year.. Bill was the reigning East Coast Conference player of the year. In the NIL era of college sports, with the money flowing, surely some Division I school would lure away a marvelously skilled 6-10 center. Head coach Mike MacDonald understood the realities. Last March 19, three days after the Wildcats lost to Aquinas in the DII regionals, MacDonald took his team out for chi

By Budd Bailey The task was simple, but not easy. If the University at Buffalo men’s basketball team wanted to qualify for the Mid-American Conference playoffs on Tuesday night, two results had to happen. The Bulls had to beat Eastern Michigan, while Massachusetts had to lose to Ohio University. Buffalo did its part. It defeated the Eagles, 72-67. But UMass spoiled the party, beating Ohio at home. We’ll have to wait until Friday before we know what eight teams in the MAC will

By Budd Bailey Senior Day (or Night) used to be a staple of the college basketball season. It was something like graduation – a day to look back at the end of a journey that usually took three or four years, and a day for all concerned to show their appreciation for the ride. The journeys have gotten shorter these days of the transfer portal, as athletes barely have time to learn how to say hello before they are saying good-bye. Yet as Canisius showed on Sunday afternoon, tha

By Budd Bailey If you want to know about how to take a direct route from Buffalo to Cleveland, don’t ask the University at Buffalo men’s basketball team. It can’t seem to figure out the way to get there. The Bulls had another chance on Saturday to take a big step toward qualifying for the Mid-American Conference playoffs. Instead, they stumbled in a 75-70 loss to Central Michigan before 2,499 in Alumni Arena. Let’s take a look, then, at the situation as the battle for the eig