UB Women’s Basketball Makes Coaching Staff and Roster Additions

Blair Estarfaa has been elevated to the position of Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach. Estarfaa spent the 2019–20 season as UB Director of Basketball Operations, and so is quite familiar with the program. Previously, Estarfaa was assistant coach at Daemen and Alfred. He played basketball at SUNY Cortland, where he averaged over 15 points per game his senior year, and also shot 40% from three point land for his career. He played his high school ball at Maryvale HS in Cheektowaga, where he averaged 25 points during his senior year.

Mitch Ford has been elevated to the position of Director of Basketball Operations, after spending one year as the Bulls’ video coordinator. Ford had been an intern with the Dallas Mavericks and participated on their scout team. Ford grew up in Rochester, NY and played his college ball at Nazareth in Rochester, where he averaged over 15 points per game for his career.

The Bulls have added freshman Ramatoulaye Keïta, 5–11 guard/forward to the roster. Keïta transfers to UB from Robert Morris University, where she sat out her freshman year.

You may notice the two-dots above the letter ï in Keïta’s last name. Those are called an umlaut and causes the letter ï to be pronounced as a long e, like the ï in naïve. Umlaut aficionados may have noticed the Bulls have another player on the roster with an umlaut in her last name, incoming freshman Sophia Öjhammar, and so I will go out on a limb and state that the Bulls will be one of the nation’s leaders in umlauts this year. But as impressive as UB’s two umlaut roster may be, the Bulls have nothing on Kent State volleyball player Melissa Kölürbaşı, who has two umlauts in her last name, plus the cedilla below the letter s and the Turkish letter ı without a dot. Impressive. But ... I digress ...

Keïta comes from Bamako, Mali, and so the international flavor on the Bulls roster continues strong. She played high school ball at Lake Forest Academy, the same school that produced former Bulls guard Teresa Onwuka. Keïta set the all time school scoring record with over 1200 career points. She also won a gold medal with the team from Mali at the Under-18 African Championships.