The Rundown - If Rutgers Could do it!

The Rundown

Today in Bull:

Weekend News: Baseball won on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday... The first sweep in a couple of years and to top it off Vinny Mallaro hit for the cycle.

The Bulls women ruined Ohio's senior day but the men were unable to upend the bobcats later that day.

Tennis swept Youngstown, Softball struggled, School track records fell, and Swim Dive competed at the MAC Championships.

And wrestling's Nate Rose competed in the PAM AM games.

From the Fanshots: Some Major league news about Steve Geltz

On the Docket: Baseball takeaways along with some hoops news and more catching up from the Olympic sports.

Elsewhere: Every time you are convinced UB has no path to a bigger conference.

Rutgers has been, some some years, a "meh" athletic department for some years. They came up the the FBS at the same time as UB and did far better but never really broke through. They are now an ok program in the B1G, finishing 8th this season.

Hoops is another story. Despite living in multi bid conferences for most of the last 20 years Rutgers has not been to a tournament since 1991. They were last to the NIT in 2006 and since joining the Big Ten they are awful. In fact they may be the worst power conference program ever!

Rutgers is the worst major conference basketball team we've ever seen - SBNation.com
Rutgers is bad at basketball. The Scarlet Knights are 0-15 in Big Ten play, and just 6-22 overall. Tuesday night they played 1-13 Minnesota in a battle to be kings of the Big Ten's cellar. Minnesota picked Rutgers up, locked them in a safe, carried the safe out of the cellar and hurled it down an elevator shaft to hell in an 83-61 Golden Gophers victory. Minnesota is now the clear second-worst team in the Big Ten, and they are capable of embarrassing Rutgers.

So what does all of this have to do with UB?

Simple. We don't need to be Boise State in football or Wichita State in hoops to move up. Improve our facilities, be competitive year in and year out in the MAC, and hope people in the Athletic Department can conceive of a way to increase UB's presence down state.

Conrad suggested a yearly home game in or around the city. Perhaps that and regular basketball games against basketball teams in NYC.

We are the State's biggest school and New York City sends more kids to UB than any other place in the state.