I did my analysis based on last year. Buffalo has the best recruiting class in the conference. Wes Clark and Graves and a Juco all American they have coming in there would all compete for time with Dartis. We need to bring in two quality recruits to compete with them alone. Akron and Miami should decline, but you better believe that with the large number of grad transfers available, a couple of MAC schools will get some quality transfers and be competitive. A lot of others MAC schools don't have the start forever policy, so they will have upgraded rosters based on who they have recruited.
Not sure why you would base it on last year when the season is over.
But I disagree that Buffalo's recruiting class if far and away better than ours as you and FearLeon said.
Bottom line is Zach Butler committed to us before Graves was off the board.
Graves may have the higher Scout rating, but Graves has better offers and the interest he was drawing when we signed him is much better than Graves (Memphis, Wichita State, Northwestern, Clemson, Florida, VCU, and Final Four bound South Carolina). We got a steal. And oh yeah he's a 6'5 PG.
Buffalo's only other HS player James Reese looks like a nice player, but his only other offers are Winthrop, James Madison, North Carolina A&T and South Carolina State. Not very exciting. Lets compare him to Bennett Vander Plas - he has twice as many offers including one from Josh Pastner when he was still at Memphis. He also took official visits to Creighton and Nebraska. Have you seen his highlight videos? He is an incredible athlete. In my opinion he will be even more of a matchup nightmare for MAC players that Jason Carter already is.
Then there's Jeremy Harris, Buffalo's JUCO recruit. He looks like a very nice player and has an offer from Texas Tech. He will possibly be an impact player the next two years at Buffalo, but we have AJ Gareri for four years. Gareri is a 3-star recruit by ESPN and the 6th best player in the state (Higher than Jayvon Graves). I'll take him for four over Harris for two any day.
Finally there is Wes Clark, the grad transfer from Missouri. He averaged 9 ppg last year for them. First off, this isn't your dad's Missouri Tigers. They were ranked 160th by Kenpom his final year. That's about 20 spots lower than where Ohio and Buffalo were ranked. He shot 37% from the field last year. For comparison, Bean Willis never shot below 39% at Texas Tech. Coming down to the MAC he will probably put up better stats, but he's not going to become a completely different player overnight.
We still have two scholarships left, Buffalo is out. Lets wait and see what we do with those final two scholarships. I would bet that at least one of them will be a better player than Wes Clark.