A Gritty Buffalo Bulls team storms into the MAC Tourney

Photo courtesy of the Buffalo Bulls

If you’re a basketball coach, you want your team to be “tough, gritty, hard-nosed and really resilient…” and that’s exactly what the Buffalo Bulls are according to Becky Burke, their third-year head coach who has a knack for transforming her teams into legitimate championship quality squads.

Burke has helped coach her current Buffalo team to No. 3 seed heading into the upcoming MAC Women’s Basketball Tournament. They are coming in hot with a 24-6 overall record as they look to bring home a MAC Championship.

The Bulls have had some great teams over the past decade. They’ve won the MAC title in 2016,2019, and 2022. They’ve gone “dancing” to the NCAA tournament in those years and made it to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 2018. The program knows winning, and Burke has continued that tradition with her own winning approach.

The Coach

I had the opportunity to talk to coach Burke this past week, and she loves her Bulls team for so many reasons, including their toughness and scrappiness. She enthusiastically shared, “ I just really love our toughness and our ability to play really hard for 40 minutes and defend at a high level… we just have a bunch of kids that are scrappy and defend, and that’s what’s given us success so far this season.”

When you watch the Bulls play, you see a squad that prides itself on defense and getting turnovers. That was on display as recently as Saturday when they downed the Western Michigan Broncos 80-54 to close out the regular season. The team only gives up 59.5 points a game on average, and it’s something that Burke, who once was the star point guard of the Louisville Cardinals basketball team from 2008-2012, really challenges her team to show daily.

The Players

The Bulls have a veteran feel about them, with several of these players having transferred into the program in recent years after Burke took over the team going into the 2022-23 campaign.

Their leader on the court is senior guard Chellia Watson, who averages 20.3 PPG and 5.3 boards. Watson used to play for coach Burke at USC (University of South Carolina) Upstate and followed her coach to Buffalo.

The Bulls’ other senior guard is Noelani Cornfield, who averages 10.6 PPG and 3.8 boards. She also led the team in assists with 165. She joined the team this season after stops at Northwest Florida and Southern Miss.

The rising star of the team is sophomore guard/forward Kirsten Lewis-Williams, who came to Buffalo from Mooresville, South Carolina. She was a star in high school and led her team of Lake Norman to a state championship appearance.

At Buffalo, she has continued her balanced attack on offense while being an excellent defender. She is averaging 13.6 PPG and grabbing 5.3 boards this season for the Bulls. She also has 63 steals and grabbed 112 defensive rebounds.

The Test

The Bulls have what it takes to win the MAC championship this week, but can they take home the honors and go dancing to the NCAA tournament? The other top seeds in the tournament include Ball State, Toledo, and Kent State. This Buffalo team has lost to all three of these teams at least once (Twice to both Ball State and Toledo).

A year ago in this same tournament, both Buffalo and Kent State made surprise appearances in the title game after upsetting Toledo and Ball State in the semifinal games. So, anything is possible in this year’s tournament.

The Bulls will play the No. 6 seed Bowling Green Falcons on Wednesday night in the quarterfinal game at Rocket Arena in Cleveland. If Coach Burke has anything to do with it, the winning culture that she’s helped bring to her current team can carry them through this tournament and a MAC title.

Learning from the best

Burke was coached by Louisville’s legendary coach Jeff Walz, who is still at Louisville and has an incredible 464-135 coaching record. Burke has really taken on her former coach’s ways of winning and building a culture of success wherever she has coached. Of her coach Walz, Burke mentioned, “ I think he’s just brilliant, so I took a lot from him… more than anything just how to win and how to do it at a high level every day and create a championship culture…”

That championship culture has certainly been seen over the first three years of Burke’s stint in Buffalo. Her tough, gritty, hard-nosed, and resilient group have their sights on a MAC championship, and that will be fun to watch as this tournament gets underway starting Wednesday.