BUFFALO, N.Y. - When Nate Oats left UB basketball for Alabama, the Bulls didn't need to look far for his replacement. Jim Whitesell was first hired by the program four years ago, joining the Bulls a week after Nate Oats was brought on as head coach. 

"He felt like 'hey look,'" says Whitesell on the hiring process. "'Let's get an older guy in here that's done a little bit of this, a little bit of that.' I learned an incredible amount from Nate. It was a great experience for me." 

Replacing Nate Oats turned into a balancing act. The Bulls wanted a strong voice to lead the program, without alienating current players on the roster.

"As a team, we were thinking they had to keep it in-house, or everyone would go their different ways," says senior guard Davonta Jordan, who estimates that half the roster would have transferred if an outside hire was made. "At that moment, everybody was trying to find out if we would stay." 

"We knew he was a candidate, but when he got the job, we were all just happy and looking forward to the season," says junior guard Jayvon Graves.

Whitesell knew that his familiarity with the program worked in his factor during the interview process.

"Those kids knew me," he says. "They knew I really believed in the system. The things Nate preached, I preach...Offensively, I thought he had such a good vision of how he wanted to play. Defensively, we agree on 95 percent of what we're trying to do."

Whitesell runs his practices pretty similarly to his predecessor, with one key difference because of a younger roster.

"We have to teach and stop and correct a little bit more because of our youth," he says. "We like our pace of practice to go, we like it to be very competitive, we like to get up-and-down, we like to share the ball. Those are still the parameters that we play in." 

The Bulls lose a lot of production from last year's senior class, including starters CJ Massinburg, Jeremy Harris and Montell McRae, along with key sixth-man Nick Perkins. Whitesell faces an uphill challenge to help UB reach its fifth NCAA Tournament in six seasons.