By Budd Bailey
Talk about a rebound.
The University at Buffalo’s basketball teams sure could learn a few things about that particular skill from their football counterparts.
Two weeks ago, the football Bulls looked awful/terrible. They were absolutely clobbered by Connecticut, 47-3, in a road game. It may not have been that close. Yes, it was a nonconference game on the road that simply got out of hand, but 47-3 is still 47-3.
That wasn’t the way UB wanted to prepare for a visit by Toledo, a perennial power in the Mid-American Conference lately and a team that bludgeoned an SEC team a few weeks ago. OK, it was Mississippi State, and not Texas, but still.
So what happened Saturday at UB Stadium? In short, the Bulls did almost everything right, and the Rockets did almost everything wrong. It added up to a 30-15 win for the suddenly 4-2 Bulls.
“I think they have seen that at our best, we can play with anybody, and at our worst, we can get beat by anybody,” coach Pete Lembo said. “Is that a fair answer?”
That’s downright eloquent, especially by postgame news conference standards. What changed in a week?
“Just the mentality of this team the whole week,” said linebacker Shaun Dolac. “We corrected mistakes from the previous week. The bye week helped us get our bodies back underneath us. During practice, guys were talking about what their job was, especially defensively.”
The list of heroes is a long one for Buffalo, but let’s start with the play of the defense. Toledo had scored at least 26 points in all of its games this season and averaged 35.8 points per game. Yes, the Rockets had a couple of running backs hurt. But Toledo only gained 46 yards on the ground. As you’d expect, Dolac, UB’s own Tackling Machine, led the way with 15 takedowns.
Meanwhile, the pass defense gave up some yardage but not many points. Both of Toledo’s touchdowns came when it was at least 21 points down. And the Bulls forced two fumbles, which were most helpful. That’s two straight conference games in which UB at least has slowed some good offenses.
“It’s our preparation during the week,” Dolac said. “We have a challenge each week, and we have the mentality that we’re not going to let anyone score. If we don’t let anyone score, they can’t win. As long as we continue to progress, the sky’s the limit for us.”
Buffalo’s offense became better as the game went along. There were only seven points scored in the first half, and UB scored them. Victor Snow scored on a two-yard run with about five minutes left in the opening period.
UB wasted no time in doubling lead in the second half. CJ Ogbonna found Jake Orlando in the end zone with a 2-yard pass after a nice drive. A 14-0 lead seemed quite good under the circumstances, but 21-0 was even better. A forced fumble led to Ogbonna’s 2-yard run for a score.
Even when the Rockets did something right, Buffalo had an answer. Toledo completed a couple of long passes late in the third quarter and finally got on the scoreboard. But UB answered with a methodical drive of its own. Ogbonna found the end zone from 1 yard away, and the Bulls were ahead by 27-7.
At that point, most of the other teams in the MAC might have seen the score and said, “Who are these guys?”
The Rockets rallied in the fourth quarter with a touchdown and threatened to score another in the final minutes. But a fourth-down sack by Antonio Colclough extinguished Toledo’s last hope.
Al-Jay Henderson ran 18 times for 142 yards, the first Bull this season to crack the century mark. UB reached back into the early 1970s playbook of Oklahoma University to use a Wishbone offense at times, a move that must have caught Toledo a bit by surprise. It worked to the tune of 230 yards … even if the players needed a history lesson about the exploits of names like Greg Pruitt and Joe Washington. (Trust me, youngsters, they were really good.)
“It was really fun to see the defense scramble around and try to figure out who’s got the ball,” Henderson said. “It had everyone on their toes about who was going to get it. Everybody has a specific job in that package.”
“We’ve been working on that for a while,” Lembo said. “We haven’t had a chance to get that going in a game.”
The beginning of the MAC season was supposed to be daunting for the Bulls, since Northern Illinois and Toledo were considered to be among the powers in the conference. Now here we are, and the Bulls find themselves at 2-0. OK, there are six more MAC games left, but no one could ask for more under the circumstances.
“We’re all trusting each other so we know the best is yet to come,” Henderson said.
“Any kind of win like this, you have to sit there and soak it in,” Dolac said. “They’re great wins against a great team. You celebrate tonight, but we have a whole ‘nother week to go. We’re trying to win a MAC championship here, and set a standard and a culture here.”
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
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