Preview: Buffalo Bulls Men’s Basketball looks to re-focus with Robert Morris matchup

UB Men’s Basketball isn’t in a good spot right now. The Bulls just lost to a Canisius team that had no business in beating them and with that they sit at a 5-6 record overall. Buffalo will take their final road trip of non-conference play today back to Pittsburgh where they’ll play a semi-neutral site game versus Robert Morris.

Robert Morris is lead by one of the youngest head coaches in the NCAA in Andy Toole. Now in his seventh season with the Colonials, Toole has compiled four 20 win seasons and has two NIT appearances and a single NCAA Tournament appearance to his name. Toole has a 120-88 overall record coming into this season.

The Colonials aren’t in the best of shape to start this year. After finishing last year 10-22, they’re currently sitting at 3-9 as January approaches. Their only wins may not be to the best of teams, but RMU did challenge a really good Lehigh team in early December.

RMU is one of the worst teams in the nation at putting points on the board as only two players average in double figures for scoring. Sophomore 6-6 guard Isaiah Still averages 15.2 points per game and also contributes 3.1 rebounds a game. Kavon Stewart is the other big offensive threat for the Colonials with his 10.4 points per game.

What to watch for

1. UB’s effort

What lead to Buffalo’s awful loss to Canisius was the lack of effort in many parts of the game—especially on the defensive side of the ball. Robert Morris is an even worse team than Canisius, but I want the Bulls to show no mercy on both ends of the floor. They need to come out of the gate strong and play a full 40 minutes of basketball to show their fans that everything’s ok.

2. Defensive Pressure

Robert Morris is a bad team offensively and that means it’s unacceptable for Buffalo to let this team score almost 80 points. If UB wants to show that their making ground on their streaky defense, holding RMU to 60 or under would be the way to go.

3. Where’s the depth?

UB basketball fans have been spoiled with depth this season but there’s a problem on the men’s side. Right now, we’re getting fooled because it seems like there are only four guys who can truly score. We need somebody besides Hamilton, Perkins, Massinburg, and Conner to step up and provide real bench scoring. It’d be even better if we could get it from our point guard.

4. Dontay Caruthers

I would love to see more offense from Caruthers, he’s shown very minutely in the last two games that he could be a scoring threat. As one of the best perimeter defenders on the team, he’s going to be on the floor so it’d be great to see some more scoring from him.