A look back and ahead at local hoops

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 in the MAAC. Admittedly, almost anything would have been an improvement over the 2024-25 basketball year, when the Golden Griffins stumbled to a 3-28 record – 3-17 in MAAC play. Coach Jim Christian had the team at 8-8 on January 9, which included the usual early-season road trips to bigger schools in the chase for paychecks. But from there, Canisius lost 11 straight games. That was the season.

It was a similar story at Niagara. The Purple Eagles had the same conference record as Canisius at 5-15, but finished 8-22. Niagara went 1-7 during an eight-game stretch early in the season, with seven of the games coming on the road. That more or less set the tone for the team. The major bright spot came with two wins over rival Canisius, which is always appreciated by the older alumni.

The University at Buffalo improved from 9-22 to 17-15 (7-11 in the MAC), which is a good step forward. Third-year coach George Halcovage’s team built up some confidence at the start of the season. The Bulls won their first eight games and 13 of their first 15. Yes, the nonconference schedule wasn’t exactly Murderers’ Row, but the victories generated a bit of excitement. The biggest problem was that UB had a two-month losing streak at home from early January to early March. The second-biggest problem was that the Bulls’ best player, Daniel Freitag, was in concussion protocol down the stretch, and the team missed him a great deal. (The two issues certainly have some connection.) Buffalo at least squeezed into the postseason and went down fighting to future NCAA team Akron in the MAC playoffs. 

As for St. Bonaventure, it was 11-2 on Christmas Day which generated some enthusiasm. Then the Atlantic 10 teams showed up, and the Bonnies went 4-14 in conference games. After the tournament, it added up to a 17-17 record that looked better than it was - and was a step backwards from 24-25’s 22-12, 9-5 A10 records. More to the point, Bona suffered its biggest loss at the last buzzer of the season, with coach Mark Schmidt heading into retirement for reasons that at best are a bit murky.

Records are fine, but another statistic has some predictive value too: attendance. As you’d guess, St. Bonaventure had the biggest announced attendance among the Big Four. The Bonnies averaged 3,585, and their biggest crowd was 4,338 for a visit by George Mason. That’s good in a 5,500-seat facility. Olean is the second-smallest city in the Atlantic 10, trailing only Davidson, North Carolina. It’s never going to be easy for the Bonnies to stay competitive with some of the conference’s teams in some of the bigger cities (New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis) over the long term.

What’s more, it’s tough to picture anyone winning more games than Schmidt did in Olean. He was always good at developing players, although that strength has been partially erased in recent years because the transfer portal has made it easier to leave before their four or five years at a particular institution are over. One of the joys of watching college basketball in the past had been seeing the development of young players over time at the same school from year to year. For many, those days are over.

Basketball apathy continues to reign at Niagara and Canisius. The announced average attendance for the Purple Eagles was 869. That included three crowds above 1,000. Meanwhile, the Golden Griffins averaged 744 per game – down from 847 a year ago. It’s also fair to say that both universities were announcing tickets sold. I heard a story about a fan who counted the number of people in the Koessler Center for a game this season, and got up to 77. You’d think that many people would stumble in from walking on Main Street just to see what’s going on inside a lighted building on a cold night.

It should be noted that attendance problems are not limited to Niagara and Canisius in the MAAC. The schools of that conference are often on ESPN+, giving people the chance to see games in other locations. The seats at those universities are quite often empty too.

What’s ahead for the four schools? Change certainly is coming to St. Bonaventure. The school has a general manager for basketball in Adrian Wojnarowski, someone known in hoop circles because of his work at ESPN. After a year of reacquainting himself with the campus, “Woj” now must find a coach who can duplicate or even improve on Schmidt’s record.  We don’t know how many players will flee Olean via the transfer portal this spring, but that usually comes with the territory carved out by a coaching change.  A little patience for all concerned is needed.

In Amherst, Halcovage has raised a UB program that essentially flat-lined for a year – a season that also allegedly included an embarrassing point-shaving scandal - to a point where it can be in the middle of the pack of the MAC. Now we’ll find out what the ceiling for the program is. These days, that usually comes down more to dollars and cents than Xs and Os. Do the Bulls have the financial muscle to compete with the traditional powers in the conference? The answer might be a big part of their fate.   

It’s tougher to see a road forward for Niagara and Canisius. It’s been said that schools at that level like the idea of at least having a chance to qualify for the NCAA men’s tournament, as it supplies a great deal of publicity for the university – which can lead to a ripple effect in terms of admissions and donations. Maybe so, but the Griffins have made exactly one appearance in the tournament since 1957. (It came in 1996, when John Beilein was the coach.)  The Purple Eagles have made it three times in history – 1970, 2005 and 2007.

Yes, schools like Canisius and Niagara have a long tradition of college basketball. But realistically, the recent rules changes about payments and transfers have made it even tough to be competitive – on the court and off it. At some point, it would be easy to see of a top administrator asking the most basic question about playing Division I college basketball: Is it worth it?

The power schools and conferences have a long way to go to iron out their own problems caused by those changing rules. We appear to be headed to the point where the big universities either will set up separate conferences for their football programs – which is where the big money is – or establish four super-conferences that essentially exclude everyone else. That probably would mean conferences like the MAAC might have to deemphasize the sport into something like a Division I-AA, with its own national tournament. Could you get people to care at that level? Good question. The other alternatives would be either to drop down to Division III or discontinue the sport.

It’s a messy time in college athletics, and the local schools in Western New York will need to know what the national landscape looks like before making their own decisions. In other words, expect more stormy seas in the immediate future.  

(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)