Running of the Bulls

Feature Image Courtesy of Paul Hokanson/UB Athletics

Daniel Freitag was a late commitment to the University at Buffalo basketball team last April, as in, late at night.

“It was late ... late,” head coach George Halcovage III recalled on Saturday. “I went nuts. I woke up my son at home. I woke up my wife, too.”Halcovage decided to pull a little prank on assistant coach Jack Fitzpatrick, who had been the lead recruiter on Freitag. He called Fitzpatrick and pretended that Freitag, who was leaving Wisconsin via the transfer portal, might be changing his mind. Then he patched Daniel onto the call.

“I’m coming!” Freitag declared.

There was good reason for Halcovage to be giddy. The Bulls were 13-49 in Halcovage’s first two years as the Bulls’ head man, 6-30 in the MAC. Critical UB fans wondered if the long-time Villanova assistant, who was part of two national championship teams under Jay Wright, was the right man to restore the Buffalo program to its former prominence.

But with a boost in NIL money, Halcovage was confident his team would break through in his third season. Getting Freitag, who had been the 11th-rated point guard in the national incoming freshman class in 2024, was a potential program-changing addition, a kid who could turn them into a winner.

In the first month of the season, Freitag has been everything Halcovage expected and then some. The Bulls are off to an 8-0 start, already one win shy of last year’s total. Freitag, a 6-2 guard, is averaging 20.1 points a game and had 21 points in Saturday’s 71-53 road win over an improved Canisius team. He’s shooting 41 percent from three and 82 percent from the four line. His floater at the buzzer beat Bucknell last week, 73-71, and made SportsCenter.

Freitag, a native of Bloomington, Minnesota, is a steady all-around player who averages 4.2 rebounds, 3 assists and 1.3 steals. He has only nine turnovers, a remarkable low number for someone who is heavily involved in the offense. He’s also a strong defender who will drop down and check opposing big men.

In the era of the transfer portal, it can be difficult for teams to find themselves early in a season. But UB seems to have developed a strong chemistry in the first month, and it can’t hurt to have a selfless first-year star player.

“It comes from them,” Halcovage III said. “It comes from the people they come from. It comes from their character. We were really intentional in building a roster out where we had an ability to play different ways, but with guys with high character who were all-in. You’re all-in for whatever the team needs.

“It’s all about trusting, and I can’t speak enough about (Freitag), the level of player he is, to come in here with a hungry and humble attitude. He could have easily been a guy who said, ‘Yo, it’s all about me.’ That’s who he is. That’s who we are. We recruited to that.”

Freitag was considered perhaps the most skilled point guard recruit in Wisconsin history when he went as a freshman. But he played sparingly as a freshman, averaging two minutes and scoring just two points all season. He wanted to stay, but the Badgers told him he was no longer in their plans.

Suffice it to say, it was a challenge.

“I’ve never been a guy who  rode the bench more than five minutes a game since I was a little kid,” Freitag said. “So it was a huge adjustment for me. The friends I made on the team made it easier, but it’s never easy to not be able to do what you love every single day. Those two days a week where I never saw the floor, it hurt. But I stayed after each game, after every practice.”His faith and belief sustained him. Freitag has the words ‘Time Will Tell’ tattooed on his stomach. He was patient. He spoke to the three people he says never lost faith in him: Troy Bell, a fellow Minnesota native who was a star point guard at Boston College; his brother Isaac; and God.

“I did that (tattoo) right before I got to Wisconsin. It kept in my mind. To go from not playing at all, cheering all day long, to being able to play, I’m super grateful. Even times like this, when I had a bad second half, it’s a lot better than sitting on the bench.”

Freitag wasn’t bad in the second half. He deferred and did the little things. In the first half, he scored 14 of UB’s 17 points in a span of 7:38 as the rest of the Bulls struggled to establish the offense against a determined Griffs squad.

In the second half, junior captain Ryan Sabol took over, scoring 16 points in just under four minutes in an astonishing run of long-range shooting as UB began to pull away. Sabol, a 6-3 guard who shot 40 percent from behind the arc in 2024-25, had been in a bit of a shooting slump of late.

Sabol, from Washington D.C., is in his third season at UB, which is somewhat rare in the age of the portal. Halcovage praised Sabol for his persistence. He also lauded 6-11 center Tim Oboh, who also stayed and is a vital force in the post for a team that nominally starts four guards.

Freitag seemed more thrilled for Sabol than himself after the win. He said you wouldn’t have known Sabol was slumping if you watched him in practice. Freitag is fond of his coach’s aphorisms, like “It’s amazing what we can accomplish when no one cares who gets the credit.”

Some players would have been reluctant to leave a major conference program for a mid-major that had lost 49 games in the previous two seasons. Freitag saw the possibilities, a place where two humbled parties might rise together. The losing record didn’t deter him at all.

“Not at all, honestly,” Freitag said. “I’m glad you asked that. This time around in my recruitment process, I was trying to find a coaching staff that I believed in, regardless of wins and losses. I almost looked at the losses aa a bonus, like they’re going to be that much more hungry to get back in the win column.

“The first day I set foot on campus here, it seemed like we all really bought in on winning. I felt the vibe. I felt like we could be a special team. That’s why I came here. I didn’t look at it like I had to do X Y and Z to help this team win. The approach I got from the coaches in our short visit did everything I needed."

Halcovage chimed in with a little business talk.

“And look, the money helps,” Halcovage said. “We don’t have more money than we want. I want these guys to be taken care of at the highest level possible, because I believe we have something special here. But we had resources for the first time to get guys in this day and age who can do what these guys are doing.

“These guys turned down bigger money to stay here. They got taken care of enough, that speaks to their character, too. That’s just the reality of college basketball today, right? What I’ll say is we’re going to make sure we remain high character and don’t forget who we are and what we’re all about.

“I told them, ‘Look, I coached big-time guards, I coached Jalen Brunson, Collin Gillespie (at Villanova). I coached guys who were smaller in stature but played bigger, right?’ And (Freitag) knew that. He fits in perfectly with what we do.”It’s only one month, but the record confirms it.