Question for the Great Basketball MInds Here

[Da Coach]

If I were the new AD here is what I would do. Not saying this is what should be done, just saying if you want to change I think this would be the way to go.

1. Fire the entire staff.

2. Do an exhaustive search with the help of Commisioner Elgin to find a young, bright, assistant from a successful program who has a history of recruiting the major markets within a 3 hour drive of Peoria (St.Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis). This coach should have spent considerable time as an assistant 6-10 years. Help the young coach pick an assistant with Valley experience, either an old guy who has had some success in the league or a former player in the league who is looking for a coaching position.

3. Get marketing efforts created in the recruiting radius mentioned above. Should be someone from Bradley present at every major basketball event from St. Louis to Chicago to Indianapolis.

4. Establish a system and recruit to that system. Don't go after a kid who is talented, but may not fit the system you run. Recruit the guys you want. If a 1 star kid plays the type of game you want - get him.

5. Stop recruiting kids from Alaska, Las Vegas, Louisiana, Texas, California. Those kids are just looking for scholarships. Get some kids who know about Bradley before they arrive at Bradley. There are plenty of good kids (1 start or 0 star) within a three hour radius that Les doesn't even recruit that end up at SIU or MSU or UNI and they kills us.

No AD would do this. Fire the entire staff immediately? He would lose nearly all credibility and lose most of the support that BU has. The program would quickly deteriorate and become a Div II or III school. It would be a disaster to fire a popular staff that has had a winning record for the past 4 seasons. Players would leave, and we would be bottom dwellers for years. Likely Bradley would never be a serious D1 team again.

Point #2- Doug Elgin is not going to help or become involved with any coaching search Bradley might do, ever. His duties as comissioner do not allow him to be involved with specific issues at member schools like this.

Points #3,4 5- If Bradley did hire a new coach and staff (which will not happen soon), no legitimate coach is going to come in and take this job and allow the AD, boosters, the President, fans, or anyone to dictate issues like who he hires for assistants, and how he should recruit. Sorry, but that's absurd. We'd have to hire some novice high school coach with little experience to agree to terms like those.

[real fan]

I have not given up on this staff; things I would change or do differently:
1 Play the guys that perform the best during the games, practice is important but the games are more important.
2 Do a better job of not substituting us out of our offensive runs.
3 If we expect to be a great defensive team we need to be able to change defenses multiple times during the game, the best defense to me is the one they
are not expecting at that time.
4 I wouldn"t mind seeing Egolf , Singh and Brown out on the floor at the same time.

[BUFAN]

Anyone can learn how to play defense. It's just whether or not they are taught how to, and required to by the person that controls playing time.

No mud slinging I'm just gonna disagree.

[SFP]

Garland I hope your post was just to be absurd! It made me laugh.

Let's just recruit the best ball players we can, period, even if they are from Mongolia IMO!

Illinois recruits real well instate and we beat them with a bunch of Texas, Alaska, Indiana, Georgia guys!

[Out of Balance]

I have not given up on this staff; things I would change or do differently:
1 Play the guys that perform the best during the games, practice is important but the games are more important.
2 Do a better job of not substituting us out of our offensive runs.
3 If we expect to be a great defensive team we need to be able to change defenses multiple times during the game, the best defense to me is the one they
are not expecting at that time.
4 I wouldn"t mind seeing Egolf , Singh and Brown out on the floor at the same time.

Never going to happen

[bigdaddystuck]

We have been playing some fairly athletic teams so far this year, with 4 and 5's coming out to the 3pt line and hitting. Singh is not that type of defender, when we play teams with more true post up players he can be more effective, like NIU.

[squirrelgotdead]

Since everyone seems ready to storm the castle and run the coach out and give up on the program- I would ask how do you propose that you would fix this team and program?

And try to be realistic..

Last night was a bit embarassing- but that team was 7-1 and had an RPI of 43. Lesser conference yes- but they out hustled us time and time again.

And by the way, last time I checked, the coach doesn't shoot Free throws for the team...

So weigh in-

I can settle for a lot of things to go along with winning and be happy.

But repeated ignorance towards fundamentals, and being "out hustled time and time again" are not on the list of things that can be tolerated. Those are the things that prevent greatness.

Bottom line, good or bad, put it all together, you hope for some consistency. The consistency is there, IMO. Is "there" where you want to be?

I'm not advocating anything one way or another, but that is my thinking today.

As I've said for the better part of 8 years now, a little bit of emphasis on defense and REBOUNDING along with other details are really all that's missing. How long are we going to accept missing them?

[AZ BU Fan]

I think it all comes down to the players BU has. Can't believe JL doesn't try to teach his players how to play D or rebound, or, that he doesn't emplasize it in practice, or, that JL plays folks who don't practice well. I've been reminded coaches can't teach shooting, particularly free throw shooting by others in this forum. My guess is JL is a pretty good communicator and teacher of young men. Soooooo

BU faithful have to believe the players we have can get more consistent and better with more experience and coaching, or, the redshirts and DD back next year will make BU much more consistent/better, or JL and his new AD, can somehow pull a rabbit out of their hats with better recruits than the players we have today.

If all this doesn't materialize this year, next year, the last option then if we all want more consistency and improvement with the BU program is give someone else a chance to see if they can elevate the program from where JL has built it.

Why or why do many posters here think it is impossible for BU to succeed without JL as coach, or that BU will have to squander away its reputation and integrity a la Binghampton or Indiana to succeed with some other coach....Would you say other Valley teams who beat BU in the MVC are all NCAA rogues and embarrassments to their universities?

[SFP]

Why did we not see SS last night? Is he injured. We needed someone to lay down the law down low. Too many easy layups were given up and absolutely terrible rotations from our big. SS would have given us some energy.

[Garland 22]

No AD would do this. Fire the entire staff immediately? He would lose nearly all credibility and lose most of the support that BU has. The program would quickly deteriorate and become a Div II or III school. It would be a disaster to fire a popular staff that has had a winning record for the past 4 seasons. Players would leave, and we would be bottom dwellers for years. Likely Bradley would never be a serious D1 team again.

Point #2- Doug Elgin is not going to help or become involved with any coaching search Bradley might do, ever. His duties as comissioner do not allow him to be involved with specific issues at member schools like this.

Points #3,4 5- If Bradley did hire a new coach and staff (which will not happen soon), no legitimate coach is going to come in and take this job and allow the AD, boosters, the President, fans, or anyone to dictate issues like who he hires for assistants, and how he should recruit. Sorry, but that's absurd. We'd have to hire some novice high school coach with little experience to agree to terms like those.

Counter Point 1 - I meant fire the entire staff at the end of the season. Sorry I think the Bradley name has the ability to withstand a total rehaul. It wouldn't take years to rebuild the whole thing. I'm suprised you have such a low opinion of the program.

Counter Point 2 - Doug Elgin helped MSU and Indiana State with their hires. Jury is still out on whether those are good hires, but he was very involved in both of those hires.

Counter Point 3 - The former, former AD made Les take Molinari's old assistants so Les must be a novice high school coach. Also in so many ways the Buescher hires were dictated to Les in that I don't think it was totally his idea.

Someone asked what great basketball minds would do, this is just my proposal. What I would do. I believe that Les has done a good job here, and am very thankful for the Sweet Sixteen run, but I'm not apposed to trying something new after 9 years.

Doesn't mean i want him run out of town, just wouldn't mind seeing what someone else could do.

[Braves4Life]

If I were the new AD here is what I would do. Not saying this is what should be done, just saying if you want to change I think this would be the way to go.

5. Stop recruiting kids from Alaska, Las Vegas, Louisiana, Texas, California. Those kids are just looking for scholarships. Get some kids who know about Bradley before they arrive at Bradley. There are plenty of good kids (1 start or 0 star) within a three hour radius that Les doesn't even recruit that end up at SIU or MSU or UNI and they kills us.

I can't agree with your reasoning here at all Garland. Egolf (Alaska) came to Les through a tip from a friend in Alaska. Essentially, he was "delivered". California kids have been "referred" by another friend of Les' -- and we all know referrals are golden. The Louisiana, Texas, Las Vegas kids are simply a result of the connections made by our assistant coach with ties out there.

SOOOOO............ What you imply doesn't really hold up, IMO. The rest of your numbered "suggestions" I won't even dignify with a comment. Sorry.

Oh, and what would I do to fix things? First and foremost, if I was the coach and my starters embarrassed me, the fans, and the university with lack of effort and passion in front of the home fans I would sit all their @sses on the bench and play the scrubs who are willing to lay their blood, sweat and tears on the line...... Even if this cost me the game. It would only have to happen one time

[Garland 22]

I think most are missing my point about the local recruiting. My point is to make that 3-hour radius a priority. In my opinion we have been spending way too much time recruiting average players from the exotic locations and missing on some key kids from a little more close to home.

I wasn't implying that you should just recruit from one area, just be the best in your locale. I guess I'm not convinced we can't out recruit SIU, UNI, MSU, and ISU for the 3-hour radius.

Our best team in the Molinari tenure featured mostly players from that 3-hour radius, same could be said for Versace, and also Les' Sweet Sixteen team.

It could be said that coach Les has recruited the three best players in the MVC over the past 6 or 7 years. I would take Summerville, Ruffin, and O'Bryant over just about any player to play in the Valley during the same time. Summerville and Ruffin are obviously local guys and O'Bryant is just out of my radius theory maybe two hours or so.

I would love to see BU win a conference championship in the next couple of years, and I think our current plan seems flawed.

[Da Coach]

I think most are missing my point about the local recruiting. My point is to make that 3-hour radius a priority. In my opinion we have been spending way too much time recruiting average players from the exotic locations and missing on some key kids from a little more close to home....

We have had this discussion before. I think this staff has tried extensively to recruit Illinois, but they haven't had much success. There are too many schools recruiting Illinois- every Big Ten school, MVC school, and most Big 12, and other conferences. I think it's wise to recruit a broader range, or we might end up getting lesser talent. What kids from the region do you think Bradley should have gotten (and could have gotten) that they didn't.

[thefish7]

So... players from your radius?

Dunson
Maniscalco
Prosser
Simms-Edwards
Singh (maybe an hour and a 1/2 outside)
Warren (maybe a 1/2 hour outside)

That's nearly half the roster, and we've been major players in the recruiting of every local talent I know of that ended up in D1. I don't know how our program could recruit local kids any more than they already do. Almost everywhere I've been the ability to recruit nationally is considered a program strength...

[patrick_o'brian]

Personally, I would want to hear about the local kids that we lost out on that are constantly going to other schools that are "killing" us. I can only think of Carlton Fay, and thats about it! The reason that we don't go after the 1-star and 0-star kids are because they are not good enough. Just 5 names would be great Garland.