There's an obvious lesson to be learned from Savannah State's historic 0-28 season, only the second time in the past 50 years that a Division I men's basketball team has lost every game on its schedule: Not every school should make the jump to Division I.

In 2001, I wrote a 5,000-word story for SI on the challenges faced by schools lured to D-I by the siren song of increased exposure and the chance for a cut of the NCAA's $6 billion TV deal with CBS.

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Some of the schools I wrote about, like Morris Brown College in Atlanta, since have been crippled by the move. Like Savannah State, Morris Brown was a historically black college that figured Division-I membership would enhance its prestige. Instead, the school's athletic department hemorrhaged money while its basketball team played an endless string of un-winnable "guarantee" games at D-I powerhouses.

These days Morris Brown barely survives as an institution. The school lost its accreditation in 2002, thanks to rampant financial problems (some of them tied to the D-I move), and enrollment has dropped from 2,700 to fewer than 150 students. It's a heartbreaking story.

Still, not every Division-I arriviste meets the sorry fate of Savannah State or Morris Brown. When I last checked in with Buffalo coach Reggie Witherspoon in 2001, the affable, perpetually hamstrung Bulls coach had a two-year record of 7-44, had yet to win a Mid-American conference road game and was trying to right a basketball program that had been on NCAA probation twice since jumping to Division I in 1991 (for violations committed under previous coaches).

"It's like running a race with a bag of rocks on your back," Witherspoon said of the probation penalties at the time. "We haven't gotten them all off yet."

But look at Buffalo now. The Bulls are 16-7 and 9-6 in the MAC East. They just played the first nationally televised game in school history last week, a 67-58 win against Ball State on ESPN2. Attendance has risen to a respectable 4,149 per game, UB students have formed their own boisterous cheering section (the Mighty Maniacs) and the Bulls now have a chance to make the NIT or (with some luck) the NCAAs.

"A lot of sleepless nights and anxiety went into this," Witherspoon told me Wednesday when I called him. "But it's been a heck of a journey just to compete in this conference."

How did Buffalo make the move to Division I work? For starters, the school was always big enough (more than 20,000 students) to support a Division-I program, but the SUNY system prohibited athletic scholarships until 1988. It also helped that, unlike Savannah State or Morris Brown, Buffalo gained admission to a conference -- in this case the respected MAC. And finally, the school made some smart hires: Witherspoon has been a tireless recruiter and promoter of his program.

The key has been a four-member senior class led by Bulls guard Turner Battle, who will be part of an emotional goodbye at the last home game March 5. "This is the first class that I've had for four years, and they've had the psychology to persevere," says Witherspoon. "The time went by so fast. I can't believe our next home game will be Senior Night."

Other new D-I schools have followed Buffalo's pattern to success. At 15-8, the University of Denver is tied for the lead in the Sun Belt West and has a chance for an NCAA bid. And despite its lack of membership in a conference, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is 17-7 with wins against Old Dominion, TCU and Florida State.

If I were an administrator at Savannah State, I'd be on the phone with people at Buffalo, Denver and TAMU-CC. Surely they'd have some lessons to share about making things work in Division I.