Kirk Wessler editorial 3/31

[JMM28]

I will tell you that I am the one who passed the information onto BigDaddy. I got a phone call while in St. Louis from someone who had heard it from a local high school A.D.

I never passed it to anyone else, and I did not post the information on the internet either. I assumed it was a rumor.

I also did not believe that BU would do it right before the LOI period.

It is interesting though that I heard this story/rumor from an unusual source.

I heard about the same story...weird timing, but it seemed to meet up with the other stories I and others had heard. It was from what I believe to be someone very close to the school/program.

I think I'd like the rumors more if they were about which bcs school wants our coach.

I remember SLU fired Brad Soderberg early-mid april a few years back, but that was a very unusual circumstance.

[shaunguth]

But wait...that was before we lost Pre-Season Valley Player of the Year, Pre-Season NCAA All-American, and future NBA lottery pick Dodie Dunson...with Dodie, we clearly would have gone 31-5, won the Valley, won the Valley Tournament, and we'd now be preparing for our matchup in the Final Four with Duke on Saturday night...

This is just as bad as saying "everyone likes Wessler now". Who exactly is saying these things?

Dodie was, in FACT, our best returning three-point shooter.

[shaunguth]

But hey...never let the facts get in the way of a good argument!

Exactly!

Again, kind of like saying "everyone likes Wessler now" or "we lost Pre-Season Valley Player of the Year, Pre-Season NCAA All-American, and future NBA lottery pick Dodie Dunson...with Dodie, we clearly would have gone 31-5, won the Valley, won the Valley Tournament, and we'd now be preparing for our matchup in the Final Four with Duke on Saturday night... ".

Really? Where are people reading these things?

[Da Coach]

I think the volume was just turned up on something that was probably going away...hmm.

I do hope that before this all does go away, that some of the people who were so sure about the validity of this rumor that they criticized others who doubted it will admit they were wrong.

[SaintLouBrave22]

ER -we heard endlessly how Indiana State did such a great job - one site named their coach as COY and people said they'd have been in the top 3 in the Valley had they NOT had players lost to injuries....you recall??

Guess what...Bradley had considerably MORE players lost for more games than InSU or anyone else in the league..
yet we cannot mention the injuries??

Gosh thats funny, because I don't recall Sammy breaking his foot or Taylor hurting his calf OR Chris blowing his ACL out...


As much as you want to play up losing Dodie, losing him was not nor will be as big as losing Marshall, Lathan, and Kelly....

[shaunguth]

Gosh thats funny, because I don't recall Sammy breaking his foot or Taylor hurting his calf OR Chris blowing his ACL out...


As much as you want to play up losing Dodie, losing him was not nor will be as big as losing Marshall, Lathan, and Kelly....

Just curious.....what exactly did Kelly give to that team that I seem to have missed?

[tornado]

disagree

their record against the weakest part of their schedule when they HAD those guys was not much different than their record against the toughest part when those guys were missing..
Hard to explain if you argue those guys were HUGE difference makers...

Like I said, their main rotation of players missed 39 games - (Marshall 7, Lathan 12, Kelly 20) our main guys missed more than that...
I just disagree that they were hurt so vastly more than we were and yet we were told you can't use injuries as an excuse..

[Buesch N Chips]

Good to see everyone likes Wessler again.

Not me.

[ER3]

Exactly!

Again, kind of like saying "everyone likes Wessler now" or "we lost Pre-Season Valley Player of the Year, Pre-Season NCAA All-American, and future NBA lottery pick Dodie Dunson...with Dodie, we clearly would have gone 31-5, won the Valley, won the Valley Tournament, and we'd now be preparing for our matchup in the Final Four with Duke on Saturday night... ".

Really? Where are people reading these things?

Is sarcasm really that foreign of a concept to you? Try reading up on it somewhere, you might enjoy it.

[Da Coach]

Just curious.....what exactly did Kelly give to that team that I seem to have missed?

Kelly was giving the Sycamores 9.0 ppg and 1.5 apg, and 30% on threes.
As I have said before, I think Kelley's injury did not hurt them, because Printy and Lathan played more, and they were better.
Marshall's injury was more significant, but he only missed 6 games because of his injury.

[ER3]

Kelly was giving the Sycamores 9.0 ppg and 1.5 apg, and 30% on threes.
As I have said before, I think Kelley's injury did not hurt them, because Printy and Lathan played more, and they were better.
Marshall's injury was more significant, but he only missed 6 games because of his injury.

OK...so help me out here...

Kelly was averaging 9.0 ppg, 1.5 apg, and shot 30% on threes...but his loss didn't hurt Indy State.

Dunson's career averages as a Brave are 9.97 ppg, 1.16 apg, and 36.9% on threes...very similar nummbers to what Kelly put up, and yet his loss was a 'major' loss for BU?...I think you've concluded that we would have been 26-5 with Dodie in other threads...

So, how does this make sense? Chris Roberts and DSE played well in the minutes that Dodie would have played...so why is the loss of Dodie such a crippling loss, in your opinion, to BU....while Kelly was no big loss for Indy State?...because Dodie got straight A's?

I fail to see the logic here...

[Buesch N Chips]

OK...so help me out here...

Kelly was averaging 9.0 ppg, 1.5 apg, and shot 30% on threes...but his loss didn't hurt Indy State.

Dunson's career averages as a Brave are 9.97 ppg, 1.16 apg, and 36.9% on threes...very similar nummbers to what Kelly put up, and yet his loss was a 'major' loss for BU?...I think you've concluded that we would have been 26-5 with Dodie in other threads...

So, how does this make sense? Chris Roberts and DSE played well in the minutes that Dodie would have played...so why is the loss of Dodie such a crippling loss, in your opinion, to BU....while Kelly was no big loss for Indy State?...because Dodie got straight A's?

I fail to see the logic here...

I'm not part of this but I would say comparing Kelly's averages this year to Dunson's averages from last year are not really apples and apples.

[ER3]

I'm not part of this but I would say comparing Kelly's averages this year to Dunson's averages from last year are not really apples and apples.

why?

[BradleyBrave]

I'm not part of this but I would say comparing Kelly's averages this year to Dunson's averages from last year are not really apples and apples.

I'm not part of this either, but what do you think DD's averages would have been? He's still essentially rotating with CR and DSE. Sure they may have played together some, but do you really think he would have played more than the 26.8 minutes he played the year before? Do you think his scoring would have gone up with the addition of Andrew Warren back to the lineup?

[Bravesfan]

When Wessler wrote that "Better Days Were Not Ahead" for this year's team after a mediocre start to the conference season...you were very quick to label him as 'wrong' and blast his opinion there...
I'd say, in the end, he was right...you might be the one that was "just plain wrong" in that instance.

Wrong. Most people who you claimed were very quick to label him as "wrong" were only saying to let the season play out before automatically writing the season off. As it turned out, Wessler was right, but only to a certain extent. Bradley did have some better days after the time that column was written, just not enough to get us to the NIT. Also, KW's article was just an opinion piece that would have made him look bad had Bradley made the NCAA Tournament or even the NIT. Basically what I'm saying is that he made a lucky guess! But the gist of what the KW "bashers" were saying was that there was no way of knowing whether Bradley would improve without letting the season play out. That KW just "happened" to predict that BU would not improve was more akin to a coin flip than any hard evidence. And that's what people were objecting to.

I don't crown KW a great writer because he just happened to get this right. And I still stand by my opinion that this was a "hit and run" piece that did not base any of his assumptions on hard facts. However, I will give KW credit for his current column "officially" squashing the rumors about Les's job security that have come up over the last week. THAT'S what a responsible journalist should do, and hopefully he continues to apply responsible journalism in his future columns.

I have no problem if KW offers an opinion that differs from mine. Just use some facts to back up the opinion instead of bashing the team only because it's his "feeling" they won't perform well.