The Buffalo baseball team understands the season doesn’t really begin until Mid-American Conference play begins. The non-conference schedule will not get a team into a conference tournament.
The NL is stacked with young talent, elite pitching and future All-Stars on nearly every team. These young studs are spread all across the league – making for even matchups and thrilling storylines throughout the year. But which teams will be playing through October?
Despite a league full of potential playoff teams, here are the five teams that I believe will make it to October, with a chance to represent the National League in the World Series.
The Mid-American Conference has granted Raheem Johnson a medical hardship waiver and the senior forward will get one more year of eligibility. Johnson missed all but one game this past season. After missing the early party of the season with a foot injury, Johnson scored four points and grabbed seven rebounds against Iowa State on Dec. 7 before re-injuring his foot and missing the rest of the season.
The Major League Baseball season will start on April 3 with the New York Mets facing the Kansas City Royals. To kick off the baseball season, I wanted to provide some predictions on who will make the playoffs, who will win the major awards and who will ultimately walk away with a World Series championship. Let’s start with the American League playoff teams.
If you predicted Josh Donaldson to take home MVP honors or no-name Dallas Keuchel to win the Cy Young, you are probably lying. Last season was one of the most unpredictable years in the MLB’s American League in quite some time. Players that weren’t even on the radar before the season now enter as some of the hottest storylines to follow for the 2016 season. There will always be fresh talent ready to amaze the baseball crowds. It’s just a matter of whom. Here are my predictions for the 2016 AL playoff teams.
One of the hottest teams on campus, the women's tennis team is currently riding a four-game winning streak, including a pair of victories over the weekend to start MAC play.
Felisha Legette-Jack’s alma mater’s run to the Final Four is aspiring the Buffalo women’s basketball team head coach and her players, who recently just completed their own conference championship season and improbable run to the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
Most wrestlers spend their first year living in the heart of Governors Hall, at the request of head coach John Stutzman. According to Stutzman, it’s been a tradition since he was a wrestler at UB in the mid-1990s.
And it should be the only rumor he wants to hear as well. I don’t understand why Marshall, even with his rich résumé in the NBA, would leave Mid-Major Buffalo just yet. I’ll say that again. Marshall, a 15-year veteran who has played with some of the NBA’s greatest, should stay at a program that reached just its second-ever postseason appearance. You bet it.
The men’s ice hockey team defeated Penn State 4-2 this past Sunday to win its first-ever National Collegiate Hockey Association Championship.
Buffalo men’s basketball assistant coach Donyell Marshall will be hired as an assistant coach at Rutgers, according to a report from CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein. A UB Athletics spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon that Marshall is still on staff with the Bulls. Marshall has ties with Rutgers new head coach Steve Pikiell, as they both played at UConn. Pikiell was also an assistant coach for UConn during Marshall’s college career.
On Monday, students, media, alumni and fans gathered in the Student Union for a rally to celebrate both teams’ conference tournament championships and NCAA Tournament appearances. Players, coaches and President Satish Tripathi were present, while members of the administration, including Athletic Director Allen Greene, were not present due to a planned vacation.
It’s been nearly a month since former Bull Solomon Jackson died following a medical emergency at a team conditioning session on Feb. 22. Tuesday marked the Bulls’ first official practice of the upcoming 2016 season and first after the death of Jackson.
The next question: Where can the Bulls go from here?
My first reaction was shock that Buffalo, fresh off a successful conference tournament run, could look barley competitive. Then I stopped and remembered just how far this team had come from the start of the regular season – how we started to see some of its strengths and how players you didn’t know about five months ago stepped up in moments you could’ve never imagined. I remembered this team is ahead of schedule.
Head coach Felisha Legette-Jack took Friday's loss as a learning experience for both her and the team.
The surprising upstart Bulls (20-13, 8-10 Mid-American Conference) want to see just how good they really are – and what better way to do that than beating one of the top teams in the country like Ohio State?
No. 3 seed Miami (26-7, 13-5 Atlantic Coast Conference) took care of business and downed the No. 14 seed Bulls 79-72 in the round of 64 inside Providence College's Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND – The Buffalo men’s basketball team (20-14, 10-8 Mid-American Conference) trails Miami 35-33 at the end of the first half in its opening game of the NCAA Tournament in the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
Solutions by The State News
