Preview/Gamethread: UB Women’s Basketball at Maryland Eastern Shore

A new era of UB Women’s Hoops officially begins this evening as the Bulls take on Maryland Eastern Shore (0-2, 0-0 MEAC) at 6:00 p.m.

The Hawks are led by head coach Fred Batchelor, who has ties to Buffalo. He’s a former UB Men’s Basketball assistant and spent two seasons as the head coach of Buffalo State’s Women’s Basketball team. In his second year there, he compiled a 25-4 record for the Bengals. Batchelor enters his fifteenth season a year ago. He’s only posted three campaigns with a record over .500, which isn’t uncommon for a middling program in the MEAC.

The Hawks are coming off of an 11-19, 7-9 MEAC campaign, which saw them fall to UB’s Sweet Sixteen juggernaut-team, 76-41. Luckily for them, they do return a lot of upperclassmen from last year.

The biggest threat that Buffalo will face is Ciani Byrom, a 5-5 guard. She closed out last year averaging a team best 11.1 points a game and dished 3.1 assists a contest. So far it looks like she’ll make a big jump in those numbers this season. She scored 19 in the Hawks’ first game of the year against ECU and 23 against Georgetown.

This should be an easy win for Buffalo. The talent on this squad is on a whole different level compared to the Hawks. It will be another good matchup for UB to build the chemistry needed to compete at a high level with all of these new freshmen in the mix.

This is your gamethread.