SIU 74 Bradley 65 post game thread

[bigdaddystuck]

There is not a game on our schedule that we can book as a should win game. Not with the team we have. They are a team coming off one of the worst in school history and I don't care who the coach is, we were not going to finish in the top half of the conference.

The talent is not there, we are a mixture of some good athletes with few true basketball skills (passing, defense, shooting etc) and some guys who have good bball IQ but don't have the athletic skills to get it done.

Until GF gets his own roster of guys in here, I for one will hold off on demanding success in terms of wins. IMO a change was needed and to think that change was going to happen and result in a huge difference right away in wins and losses is ridiculous.

[Beninator]

No team fails based solely on one person, ever.

Ultimately though, the coach will usually take the most blame.


This season was always going to be difficult. You had the coaching change, players quit, and new offensive and defensive concepts.

Anytime you get a new coach, with new ideas, and a roster with none of your own players you will run into difficulty. Especially, in the Valley with deep, more experienced teams.

I don't blame anyone specifically for this season. It is a combination of things.

I also never expected much this season. Maybe I was in the minority there, but I expected BU to struggle mightily. I thought we would finish last. I thought we would get our tails kicked. But I also thought the guys would work hard, and they are.

My question at this juncture is, when do we start playing the younger guys to get them the needed experience for the future?

[Braveman]

Such as??

Why the secrecy? Tell us who should be fired.


Who should bear the responsibility??

The administration, for firing JL, obviously....

A better question would be, if JL was the coach, which "bigs" would be here that would change any of this "mess"? To me it is plain that some didn't like the change, belabor the point and want to say " I told you so" and that is fine... Just as those who wanted change are trying to defend a bad start to the season...

This board and the "other board" are less and less a discussion about BU sports as they are mere opinion and blame boards...

[BradleyJD]

My question at this juncture is, when do we start playing the younger guys to get them the needed experience for the future?

I wonder that as well. I also wondered that last season. If guys aren't getting in, at all...then they shouldn't be on the roster, imo.

I'm not saying we should dump a bunch of guys and pull scholarships, but honestly, how can they be on the roster and NEVER get into games.

Why keep them if they can't play?

Now, I know GF is playing the hand that was dealt at this point, but I would assume moving forward in years 2, 3, and beyond that the turnover has to happen, right?

[tornado]

..SIU had maybe 1 player who would have started for Bradley, and a team full of walkons and 1 and 2 star players, most of whom had no other offers than SIU....

They even have players who were looked at by our current staff and that we passed on and didn't even offer!

..I thought BU played as poorly on D as they could have. The rotation on our help defense is not good.
Coach Ford is going to have to make some changes ...

Stop blaming Coach Ford - he had nothing to do with this - he deserves more time..

Attendance seems to be down about an average of 1,000 tickets sold ..

You're being generous - we are down over 1600 per game over this point last season and last year was a very bad attendance year

.. it's the utter lack of competitiveness that does.

but this contradicts Kirk Wessler completely - he says the only thing he can find whatsoever that is positive is that this team does play hard and compete - they just aren't successful at it

And there outside factors for this year....

those outside factors scared away the first half-dozen or so candidates who sought the head coaching job at BU



Lastly - one open question -- and I'd really love for at least ONE person try to take a shot at answering - PLEASE...

-What was our end-game plan?? FOUL or NOT FOUL??

When we were down 6-8 in the final few minutes -- you can try a couple different ploys.

--You can try fouling to stop the clock and hope they miss FT's - we did that a couple times and it they did miss a couple front end of 1-and-1's

--or you can try NOT FOULING and set back, play tight defense, try to force a bad shot or a shot clock violation...and hope you still have enough time to get up a few quick shots and close the deficit...and we also did that a couple times..

BUT -- we alternated between fouling and NOT FOULING and we didn't seem to have any one particular plan - each time down the court we did something different --

..when we let them eat the FULL 35 seconds and get their shot clock violation with only 2 minutes left and a single digit deficit - we obviously allowed nearly a FULL 1/3 of all the remaining time left on the clock to disappear!

BUT it was obvious at other times in that SAME interval that we were trying to foul quickly before they could run the clock! We even subbed in Woods at 1:54 JUST to foul one second after he entered the game and put Brown-Surles on the FT line.
BUT then when they rebounded at 0:44 we backed off and waited almost 20 seconds again before we fouled --

So someone help me out - were we fouling to lengthen the game and give a possibility of catching up or were we letting them run out their shot clock each time?
I will hang up and listen to the answers....

[wily coyote]

Nope. But it would be nice if someone accepted some responsibility for what shapes up as possible the worst season of Bradley basketball in my lifetime.

Please don't take this wrong but your man brought 11/13 ths of this mess in here. This continual harping as to how bad we are is getting real old especially when if we would have done it last year we would now be OTOB. Why don't we just realize whose here and who brought them in here then hope for some improvement until Geno can get his players in here . Then if we are still no higher the our 4th or 5th place we'll all have reason to complain.

[BradleyJD]

Stop blaming Coach Ford - he had nothing to do with this - he deserves more time.

I think that is over simplistic. While I agree he needs time. Certainly more than 1/2 of one season. But, I would not give him 9 years either, if he was not winning.

I think Coach Ford has to take the blame, after all he is the coach.

So someone help me out - were we fouling to lengthen the game and give a possibility of catching up or were we letting them run out their shot clock each time?
I will hang up and listen to the answers....

How would any fan know the answer to this. I would think the players and coaches could do that. Maybe a call to GF's radio show could get you the answer.

[Beninator]

I wonder that as well. I also wondered that last season. If guys aren't getting in, at all...then they shouldn't be on the roster, imo.

I'm not saying we should dump a bunch of guys and pull scholarships, but honestly, how can they be on the roster and NEVER get into games.

Why keep them if they can't play?

Now, I know GF is playing the hand that was dealt at this point, but I would assume moving forward in years 2, 3, and beyond that the turnover has to happen, right?

Some legitimate points....

[Beninator]

Please don't take this wrong but your man brought 11/13 ths of this mess in here. This continual harping as to how bad we are is getting real old especially when if we would have done it last year we would now be OTOB. Why don't we just realize whose here and who brought them in here then hope for some improvement until Geno can get his players in here . Then if we are still no higher the our 4th or 5th place we'll all have reason to complain.

I disagree with some of the things you stated on this post, but this is one of the reasons I prefer to comment on what I presently see or don't see happening. What happened in the past happened... I'll admit to looking back at things but at some point that gets old. I will however take a shot here and there about the PJS!

[srw]

Name a worse season.

The last two albeck seasons, the first Mo season...

Not even close.

At that time the league was in the 20's RPI wise.

My mantra is repeated.

3 year process.

Also if we dont make the postseason, who cares how bad we are.

[Chico]

Stowell was a fine coach, but he had a coaching mentality straight out of Hoosiers- just give me 5 guys and I'll coach them up. Unfortunately he never felt it was very important to recruit better talent and athleticism, while the rest of college basketball, and especially the MVC were doing just that.

Hate to disagree, but I always thought Coach Stowell's had better talent than many thought.

[tornado]

The last two albeck seasons, the first Mo season...

Not even close....

not close??

How about this comparison..

Last two Albeck years:
89-90 - we were one game under .500 in the Valley and finished 5th - anyone wanna bet we aren't 5th this year?
At one point in the Valley season we were 6-3, we had a stretch from Xmas thru early Feb. where we won 10 of 14 games and were drawing 9,000-10,000

90-91 - we were bad but we still finished 6-10 in the Valley - finishing 7th, and sweeping both games against Illinois State

First MO year:
91-92 - sure we were bad again but we still didn't finish last in the MVC..
HOWEVER - no matter how bad we were in 91-92 the pain was softened by the signings of the following players who were gonna be here in 92-93...
Deon Jackson, Marcus Pollard, Billy Wright, followed by AP, Bayo, etc...

[Buesch N Chips]

The joy of stats. You can get them to say whatever you want. The only thing I care about is the eye test, and the last two home games have been two of the worst I have ever seen in terms of me enjoying what I am watching. We'll get there. Might take a few years and a few defections.

[Stardust6702]

Not a whole lot of positives I saw about last nights game. Last night only further gave evidence to the lack of shooting and overall depth that our team has. I still do not understand why Eastman is allowed the shoot the 3, Prosser and Sticks need to learn to box out, Geno needs to learn to switch to a zone when they go on a rally for a straight 10 points by simply driving in the lane and for the love of God free throws, free throws, free throws.

The defense is what I was most frustrated with last night. We were getting beat on easy lay-ups all in the 2nd half and Geno still play man defense? SIU just walked in and made lay ups or excuse me twice they made dunks. I haven't been critical of Geno's coaching in the previous games but last night was inexcusable.

Since I thought this would be the only home game we would win from the valley i'll be spending the rest of nights at the gym. Maybe with a little practice in FT ill go out for the team next year.

[SFP]

For me, that was probably last year. This one could get that bad, but there's a lot of basketball left to be played. Also, I have no reason to believe we'd be any better this year had Coach Les been retained. At least now I can think to myself that we have made a new start and it might get better.

We would have been better this year if JL stayed. We would have had Abel, SM and Harris. That would have given us the depth that is needed for this year to compete for 40 minutes.

Now a deep breath everyone. We will not be much better next year unless we get a super recruit. I'm not blaming GF. I'm giving him 3 years to see positive results. This is a re-building process at this time which we should not be pointing our fingers at GF or JL. It is what it is and since I have not paid for season tickets I'll stand by patiently. I have paid for the streaming video which I have only used twice