Southern Mississippi @ Buffalo

Analysis

Too Much of a Good Thing: Looking at our possession efficiency model based on historical data, Southern Miss was the pick at the end of last season. Good news for both teams, this isn’t last season anymore. Southern Miss collapsed after an adequate start last year, and Buffalo is looking to build on a promising end to their season. After overhauling their coaching staff, and starting lineup, expect there to be excitement surrounding what this team may be able to achieve this season, but don’t expect to see the fruits of their labor until this team has time to start meshing. Buffalo on the other hand, return their leading scorer, and look to build on what head coach Halcovage started to get rolling late last year.

Why Buffalo

“Why Buffalo?” has almost as much to do with the question “Why not Southern Miss?” as anything else. Southern Miss has a lot of variables up in the air. Their recruitment approach included searching for transfers from Division II, the NAIA, and JUCO circuit. Along with an overhaul of the coaching staff, I don’t see them getting out to a strong start today. On the other hand, I think George Halcovage III is going to generate a lot of excitement for Buffalo this year, and with Ryan Sabol returning, along with Wisconsin transfer Daniel Freitag, who didn’t get a lot of run last year, but was highly touted out of high school, enough to the tune of a Big 10 look, I think we’ll see Buffalo cover this one in a close game that could look a little sloppy at times.