BUFFALO, N.Y. - It's been nearly three weeks since UB football watched a 19-point lead slip away in the MAC championship game, and players are still waiting for that pain to disappear. Lance Leipold led the Bulls to a 10-win season in his fourth year in Buffalo, but he admits that loss lingered over the team on Selection Sunday.

"It was an open wound you had," he says. "The biggest thing we talk about many times, you can’t allow that to affect the next one."

Leipold hopes his players three weeks between games is enough for his players to rebound from that devastating loss. While the Bulls get ready for Saturday's Dollar General Bowl, senior defensive end Chuck Harris plans to spend time with his many aunts, uncles and cousins who live in the area.

"When I think of Mobile, Alabama, I think of country. Where my family stays, it’s so heartwarming," he says. "It’s calm down there. Like a Buffalo with dirt roads. It’s so nice down there."

This year's team has no shortage of motivation - players remember going 6-6 last year (and gaining bowl eligibility), only to miss out on playing in a bowl. UB has also never won a bowl game, losing in the 2008 International Bowl and the 2013 Potato Bowl.

"This year we came out shooting. We’re still shooting. It’s all a journey," Harris says. "Stuff like that happens for a reason, and I believe in that. It’s very rewarding at the end of the day."

If bowl prep wasn’t time-consuming enough, UB coaches are still recruiting and visiting high schoolers; Leipold says it’s been hectic, though it beats the alternative of not having a bowl game.