ANTHONY GETTINO
Special to The Leader
College basketball is a sport that almost everyone during March enjoys to watch.
It doesn’t matter what team is playing who, just the thrill of watching all these teams playing back to back to stay alive is exhilarating.
Most years, New Yorkers have a team in the hunt to win a title: the Syracuse Orange.
This year, there are two.
The University of Buffalo basketball team has been phenomenal this season. They are currently ranked in the top 20 in both the AP Top 25 poll and the Coaches Poll. If there is a team that can get to the Final Four this season from New York, it’s probably coming from western New York.
The Bulls are a very senior-heavy basketball team that plays in the MAC Conference, otherwise known as the Mid-American Conference. The leading scorer on the team is senior guard CJ Massinburg, followed by senior guard Jeremy Harris, then senior forward Nick Perkins, sophomore guard Jayvon Graves and senior guard Dontay Caruthers.
What Buffalo has been able to do this season has been extraordinary. It isn’t like they’ve just been beating up on mid major opponents with an experienced team either. They have faced off against some good teams.
They easily handled Syracuse on the road in the Carrier Dome, beat a ranked West Virginia on the road early in the season and lost their first game to Marquette on the road in late December.
The Bulls are currently 18-2 and well on their way to going to the tournament again for the fourth time in the past five years. If they win the MAC tournament after the regular season ends, they will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA March Madness Tournament, but if they lose, as of right now their position is very safe.
What is for certain is that this season has been magical so far. What isn’t certain yet is just how magical it may be.