mgruben, post the buffer settings, the minimum and the additional and client version. Someone here might tell you why this happens to you. Consider BOINC like your homebank on which you've set automatic payment withdrawals, then ask yourself when you need to top up the balance

Since you are using version 7.2.xx, the settings on the WCG site match up like this:

Connect to network about every ... days = Minimum work buffer
Cache ... extra days of work = Additional work buffer

Version 7.2.xx will fetch work whenever the amount of work on your system drops below the Minimum work buffer setting. The best way to make it fetch work earlier in your network availability window is to set them like the following:

Connect to network about every ... days/Minimum work buffer to 2.5
Cache ... extra days of work/Additional work buffer to 0.0

Setting Minimum to 2.5 should provide enough work to last for the 22 hours without network access and when the network is available it will start uploads, then request more work as soon as the number of uploads is less than ncpus*2. The most important part is to set the Cache extra/Additional work to 0.

Wouldn't you know, the obverse was just what I was looking for.

That is, setting:
Sends scheduler requests at (well, really near) the beginning of the network availability window.
It's exactly the setup I was looking for, and was the one I hadn't yet tried.
Thanks for the suggestion Bobcat