CSNbbs

First you have NIU giving UB all it can handle in front of another sold out house at Alumni Arena. I thought Alumni looked great and the fans & teams put on a great show for the ESPNU audience. The student section and body paint was out in full force. Is there a more crazy, rowdy and loud arena in the MAC right now? It's hard to believe that Buffalo is now one of the marquee broadcasting locations in the MAC conference.

Meanwhile about 12 miles down the road in downtown Buffalo, you have Niagara beating Rider in the MAAC championship at HSBC arena in front of a very loud 6,300 people. I couldn't believe that Bill Rafftery and Jay Bilas were part of the ESPN2 broadcast?!? Hey Jay, both UB and Akron beat Niagara this year so give the MAC a little love sometime....it's a tougher conference than the MAAC by far.

Anyway, good to see another Western NY team make the tourney. There's a faction of UB fans that don't want Niagara (or Canisius) to steal any thunder in the local media but i say good for the Purple Eagles. They deserve it even though they skated through an easier conference to get there. The fact of the matter is that UB received three times the coverage in the paper as Niagara this season. I guess that will even up a bit over the next two weeks.

zrb2 Wrote:I thought Alumni looked great and the fans & teams put on a great show for the ESPNU audience.

Looked good on TV. It is pretty small though. How many does that place hold? Like 6k?

They took out some bleachers and added chairbacks during the offseason. It reduced capacity from nearly 9,000 down to 6,100. That's OK though. During the season they might average 4,500 or so and the biggest games will sell out. They would not routinely fill up a 9,000 seat arena.