Final: Butler 87 Bradley 75

[Chucky T's]

Butler is a good team, no doubt about it. I'm going to have to disagree with Da Coach on my opinion with our defense....I don't think it was very good tonight. We had a lot of guys getting beat off the dribble and when we come to help Butler would kick it out for the open three....which they made. All three coaches on the post-game show pretty much agreed we gave Butler way to many open looks.
On the offensive side of the ball, we lack a consistent outside shooter. Sammy is OK and will get his points but the rest of the guys are really struggling. How many air balls did we shoot tonight?

AW was wearing a boot tonight (I was told, I didn't see it myself) I have a feeling we will not see him on the floor anymore this year. Just my opinion.

At this point I hope we can keep improving and get our young guys a lot of experience. I AM NOT throwing in the towel on this season yet because we still have a lot of basketball to be play but things do need to change pretty soon. I hope JL can turn this around by the time the conference games start.

[BUBraves06]

What has Collins done to start?

Not a darn thing.

[Da Coach]

AW was wearing a boot tonight (I was told, I didn't see it myself) I have a feeling we will not see him on the floor anymore this year. Just my opinion.

AW has been wearing the boot continuously now for a couple weeks, and will continue until next week when he'll be re-evaluated by the doctor. It's a last effort to get the pain to improve.

[jasonpeoria911]

Only changes I want to see is some players that can make a fricken free throw. Take these players for a 2 hour practice with nothin but FT shooting. Can gurantee you, shooting 150-200 FT's a practice will make that 58% FT shooting the last 2 games go way up. Lost by 12 points tonight and missed 13 Ft's. Lost by 16 points to MSU and missed 15 FT's. We make 75% of those missed ones and it's a totally different game strategy to the end. Then they need to work on getting the ball into the post. Shot 28% 3's tonight and 18% 3's against MSU. Saw several opportunities to get the ball down low to DC but rarely gave it to him. If anything, a lot of the blame needs to be on Les's coaching strategy. Saw very few plays tonight emphasizing post play and they obviously failed to practice FT's the last few days. Rest of non-conference is meaningless as far as record wise but have to see improvements in FT shooting otherwise its a definite 6th or 7th place finish in the Valley.

Jason

[TheHeemyMonster]

I think it's about time to seriously consider redshirting AW.

From what I've heard from multiple sources, that is all but a done deal

[ph]

Les' comments seemed to indicate that if you don't practice you don't play. When Buescher praised Maniscalco's game to Les in the postgame Les was strangely silent. Plus, Sam was not in the game as much in the second half. My gut tells me Sam sits for a game or two..... But we need him as a starter and hungry come MVC time.

Sam had 1 assist. AT got the same number in the last 3 minutes.

I thought it was a sport on this board to deride blatently selfish players on other teams.....

[Da Coach]

Do you think Sam had 1 assist because he's selfish?

[Chucky T's]

We do not feed the post AT ALL in our offense. I can count on one hand the times one of our big guys set a good post and someone actually fed him the ball down low. Our big guys are usually running around setting screens 23 feet from the hoop and then rolling to the basket.

[Braves4Life]

If anything, a lot of the blame needs to be on Les's coaching strategy. Saw very few plays tonight emphasizing post play and they obviously failed to practice FT's the last few days.
Jason

Would you emphasize post plays with our post personel. Bradley has never been a post team and has not recruited pure post players. That's a fact, Jack . And it's awfully hard to correct poor free throw shooters overnight. I'd submit that these guys have been poor free throw shooters their whole life and have already ingrained poor technique in their muscle memory. Nobody worked harder than Shaq to improve free throw shooting and he STILL could not make them.

[braves12]

I am happy the montra of this team is defense so we only gave up 87 points to a team averaging 67 points coming into the Civic Center.

[MacabreMob]

Maybe I missed a post, but did anyone notice the first tip off the game? I thought it was very interesting. TW tipped. DC was trying to get position on a Butler player which got the Refs to kinda "clear" things up. Just an interesting set.

[ph]

It's never a good statistic from your starting PG.

Something is blatently and horribly wrong with it. might not be pure selfishness, but itis certainly alarming and a symptom of some serious problem.

[Beninator]

What has Collins done to start?

Let's see.... He has done well in pracitce and has pictures of JL....

We lost by 12, but it felt more like 30. I never felt like we belonged in that game at all, even when we cut it to 6.

This team is sorely lacking in fundamentals and basketball IQ.

-Offense. Our offensive sets (I use that term loosely) seemed to devolve into playground ball waaaaaay too often. I was pumped after the alley-oop at the start but after that it seemed like there was very little flow to the offense. Maybe that's just because of the number of new players, but it seems like things should be coming along better after eight games.
-DC is a lost cause. When he came in in the second half, it mostly looked like he was running into Sam M every possession on D. AT can't be any worse, can he?

Great points pfunk...you saved me a lot of typing...

Changes need to be made..... I might change my mind tomorrow, but thinking out lout tonight, I would start the following.

EM
DD
TB
TW
SS

AT first off the bench to spell SS...DC gets very limited minutes if any... Maybe pick and choose some spots to go big with SS and AT on the floor at the same time....

[pfunk880]

Maybe I missed a post, but did anyone notice the first tip off the game? I thought it was very interesting. TW tipped. DC was trying to get position on a Butler player which got the Refs to kinda "clear" things up. Just an interesting set.

My view on that was that it's sad that we can't trust our 7-footer to jump for the opening tip.

Let's see.... He has done well in pracitce and has pictures of JL....




Great points pfunk...you saved me a lot of typing...

Changes need to be made..... I might change my mind tomorrow, but thinking out lout tonight, I would start the following.

EM
DD
TB
TW
SS

AT first off the bench to spell SS...DC gets very limited minutes if any... Maybe pick and choose some spots to go big with SS and AT on the floor at the same time....

I think that's a good looking lineup/strategy.

[Beninator]

Maybe I missed a post, but did anyone notice the first tip off the game? I thought it was very interesting. TW tipped. DC was trying to get position on a Butler player which got the Refs to kinda "clear" things up. Just an interesting set.

Another quirky part of the game was when Butler called a time 13 seconds into the second half. Does anyone know what that was about?