Recruiting -- kids aiming high

[tornado]

It is hard to get kids to play at a Bradley or any mid-major if there's even a chance they can get an offer from a bigger schools.
I understand that - the kids want to play under the big lights and they buy the hype that's only gonna happen in the Big Ten or Big East....

That's unfortunately what BU will always be up against.........

BUT -- I am going to try to make the point that kids should consider the mid-major options more -- just look at guys like Stephen Curry, Doug McDermott, Kyle Korver...

I have a few more examples..........

Back 4-5 years ago Bradley HEAVILY targeted four different guys, similar players who were shooters...
and yet ALL FOUR got offers to go elsewhere and landed at the BCS-level.
I don't doubt that all had decent careers and enjoyed it,
but if you watched any games yesterday you noted that ...
Matt Roth (IU) is a dead-eye shooter,
Kyle Kuric (Louisville) can go for 20 pts just about any time he wants,
Ryne Smith (Purdue) went 5-8 from 3-pt,
Zach Novak is a great, tough kid...would have been a star in the Valley

All four of those kids were close to going to Bradley yet went elsewhere -- but all four have the talent to have been BIG TIME stars in the Valley -
20 ppg scorers, maybe getting the kind of national pub Doug McDermott is getting...

and yet currently none of them are getting much at all except a little mention as good role players. None were All Conference (except HM for KK),
and if you check their stats...none have any real awesome features to their career stats.

...........career, senior yr
Kuric 8.0 ppg, 12.9 ppg
Novak 8.1 ppg, 9.5 ppg
Smith 5.3 ppg, 9.4 ppg
Roth 4.9 ppg, 4.7 ppg


All four were career single digit scorers and only one even got close to 1000 career pts...
They made the choices they wanted to make, BUT -- I am convinced all four could have been big time stars had they gone MVC

Hopefully in the future - the success of kids like Doug McDermott will cause more good players to take the mid-major route and become bigger stars with FAR better futures in the professional leagues...

[Da Coach]

Bradley has also been close to landing some players who went on to star at other schools like Damien Lillard, Shelvin Mack, Iman Shumpert, Darius Johnson-Odom, Dwight Buycks, and others. It's not easy, but we just need to land a couple more of those caliber players. Maybe the new facilities will help.

[PTownHawkeye]

Another great example is Ray McCallum at Detroit. 5-star recruit who went to play for his father...and whaddya know, in his sophomore season they just won the Horizon tourney and he will now get the exposure as part of the Big Dance. Every year there are mid-major sweathearts...anybody remember Harold "The Show" Arceneaux from Weber St. about 10 years ago? High level JUCO transfer who ended up as the star of the tourney that year - even though they didn't get to the Sweet 16.

That didn't necessarily translate to NBA success, but he still got a ton of exposure by leading a mid-major cinderella team in the tourney.