The Mid-American Conference’s announcement this week that a select package of league games will be available to watch online for a fee hasn’t deterred Buffalo’s plan to Web cast a group of upcoming home games for free.

“We’re working diligently to give our fans another avenue to tune into UB athletics,” Associated Athletic Director Paul Vecchio said Friday. “We’re going to work to have several men’s and women’s basketball games streamed on our site to no cost.”

UB men’s games against Toledo (Jan. 24), Northern Illinois (Feb. 3), Bowling Green (Feb. 13) and Akron (March 1) — which Time Warner plans to air on tape delay — will stream live on BuffaloBulls.com, Vecchio said. The Feb. 3 broadcast is a double-header with the women’s game.

Lockport Cable Television productions of UB women’s games against Kent State (Wednesday), Northern Illinois (Jan. 27) and Western Michigan (Feb. 7) will likely also be streamed.

Bulls fans will be able to purchase two men’s games (Feb. 21 at Kent State and Feb. 24 at Miami) and one women’s game (Feb. 14 at Miami) on All-MACcess at mac-sports.com for $5.95 each.

Whether they’ll be able to watch the game is a different matter. Ray Mernagh, the subject of last week’s column, reported on his hoopwise.com blog that he ordered Thursday’s Miami-Akron game but was unable to view it. We had similar problems during football season.

UB was preparing to announce their web-streaming plans before the MAC’s surprise announcement Wednesday. Athletic Director Warde Manuel inquired with the league office to find out if the MAC would try to prevent UB from streaming games for free, Vecchio said. With no response as of late Friday, Manuel decided to forge ahead with the initial plan.

The TW-13 and LCTV feeds be used for this season’s UB Web casts. Niagara and Canisius are streaming mostly student-produced games this season, something Vecchio said UB hopes to emulate in the future.

“What’s materialized here in the last couple of weeks has really been exciting,” Vecchio said. “I hope we’re just scratching the surface of what we can do, in partnership with the different departments on campus.”

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MAC fans speak of the Missouri Valley Conference in jealous tones these days after the MVC sent four teams to the NCAA tournament last season.

And, according to a recent article in the Kalamazoo Gazette, it’s unlikely the MAC will be able to imitate the MVC’s success in the near future.

Graham Couch, author of the piece, argues that the MAC’s focus on football is to blame.

“Talk about the Valley, they’ve done it the right way,” Couch quoted Western Michigan University Athletic Director Kathy Beauregard as saying. “They’ve committed what we’ve done in football. The issue for us is, there just isn’t enough to go around right now.”

Douglas Gnodtke, UB’s assistant athletic director, said he doesn’t think the MAC emphasizing football and basketball’s expense.

“All this stuff is cyclical, as far as strength of conferences,” he said. “Five years ago the MVC was only getting one bid.”

Gnodtke said what’s hurting MAC basketball the most is that the power schools are reluctant to play quality mid-major opponents. Pittsburgh’s visit to Alumni Arena in December is an aberration that most observers don’t expect to see again.

Financially, however, the MAC is in desperate need of a second or third bid in the next few years. The NCAA distributes money to conferences based on number of teams that qualify for the tournament and how many games they end up winning. MAC school’s are still living off Kent State’s run to the Elite Eight in 2002. In two years, the NCAA payments will fall off by as much as 60 percent, according to Couch.

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Listening on the radio last Sunday as UB’s Eric Moore and Bowling Green’s Martin Samarco matched unconscious-shooting wits reminded us of the can-you-top-this dual between Larry Bird and Dominique Wilkins that NBA TV seems to air in continuance loop.

But neither player was able to carry over his stroke to the next game. Moore followed up his 35-point, 11 trey performance by going 2 for 15 from the field in Wednesday’s loss to Kent State. Samarco, who lit up UB for 43 points and seven 3s, hit just four of 20 shots Thursday in the Falcons loss to Ohio