Final: Bradley 55 Loyola 38

[molar50]

No, I do not expect any miracles. He could get lucky and find a good JC player available. Maybe a coach gets fired from another program and he gets a good player who transfers to Bradley. We will probably finish 8 again next year.

[wily coyote]

I

There is nobody questioning that Geno will be here and will be recruiting. But I see a pattern developing that may be part of the problem why we can't land many quality talented recruits who step in and contribute like they are expected.
We will be spending most of our time, effort, and resources this March and maybe into April, recruiting for more 2014 recruits to fill scholarship openings (some of which will not likely become open until spring). Most other teams have already finished their 2014 recruiting and have moved on to 2015 & 2016. This creates a pattern where we are always chasing a dwindling pool of less talented players, mostly jucos and overlooked project-types, and then falling behind with the next recruiting cycle while other schools make their inroads. Thus the cycle keeps repeating itself each year. We simply aren't making those early inroads on enough high-quality recruits, staying with them, and signing them early like other schools focus on doing. Most of the top talent is recruited that way, and not by late scrambling to land marginal juco players to fill the slots created by booting your own recruits.

I hear what your saying but don't agree with it. We do seem to be recruiting kids for the following year for the last several years but I'm sure we are recruiting kids for 2015 and 2016 every day. You and I just don't get calls telling us about it. We just don't seem to get many kids commit early and what concerns me more is the talent of the kids we do get. Not real impressed with what we've brought on campus the last 4 or 5 years. Our record proves that.

[tornado]

lost in some of the hoopla is the halftime enshrinement of the 2014 HOF Class

[LongTimeFan]

From what I have seen this year, we are known to be recruiting eighteen 2015 players. I believe seven have offers from Bradley. I would imagine there are more that I have not heard about. I believe all eighteen have been mentioned here.

It has seemed that we recruit a lot of good players like Cunningham but we just have not been able to get the signatures.

[Da Coach]

...
It has seemed that we recruit a lot of good players like Cunningham but we just have not been able to get the signatures.

Agreed. I believe my post above explains some of this issue.

[Da Coach]

Dave Reynolds: Bradley men have to win now-

http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140220/SPORTS/140229885/10963/SPORTS

Kirk Wessler-

http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140220/SPORTS/140229886/10962/SPORTS

[tornado]

A couple odd statements in the Dave Reynolds column-

Even Dave was a bit puzzled by this one...
..we have three games left ... "we can beat or lose to anybody in the league. We’re as likely to go 0-3 as 3-0."
...hmmm....I'd think 3-0 is a bit more of a long shot...


and then this one from DR:
"..Bradley freshman center Xzavier Taylor has maintained his national lead in fouls per minute at 9.0."
...seriously? 9 fouls per minute??

[Da Coach]

What I find even more strange is this section of Dave's column:

Unfortunately, the Braves’ RPI nonconference strength of schedule — the primary tiebreaker after head-to-head competition — is 267, ninth in the league ahead of only 324 Loyola. Bradley isn’t that far behind Evansville (240) and Southern Illinois (242) on the list.
That’s why Tuesday’s 75-64 loss at SIU was a pivotal game in the Braves’ pursuit of a Friday tournament start.
What sticks in Ford’s craw is the fact that SIU played a Division II team — Missouri S & T. Because S & T isn’t Division I, it doesn’t count against the Salukis’ RPI number.
“We played all Division I teams and we’re barely behind ’em (in SOS),” Ford said. “If we subbed out one of the lower-ranked Division I teams we played for a Division II, we’d have a higher strength of schedule. It would be a little unfortunate if we lost the tiebreaker because we played all Division Is and somebody else didn’t. But in the end, we had our chance to sweep SIU (and earn the automatic tiebreaker) and we didn’t do it.”

Amazingly, we have been reduced to complaining about another MVC bottom dweller team having played a Division II team, and we are blaming for possibly costing us a chance to avoid a Thursday play-in game!

No! We played way too many cupcakes and 300+ RPI bunnies! That is what will cost us!
That logic completely ignores the only factor we had control of, our own schedule, and shifts the blame to SIU's game against D2 Harris-Stowe as the problem.
The fact is that if SIU had not played Harris Stowe, they almost certainly would still have a better SOS than we do, no matter who they substituted for them.

According to the CBSSports.com NCAA page, the difference in non-conference SOS between SIU and Bradley right now is BU 291-SIU 244 (that is not "barely behind 'em").

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/sos?&_3:col_1=6&_3:col_2=6

That differs significantly from the numbers in Dave's column, I'm not sure why.
That is a significant difference, that even if Bradley removed the worse team on our schedule (right now that would be Jacksonville State, which we had to play because it was part of a tournament) and replaced it with a D2 school, as Geno suggests, it probably still would not have been been enough to move Bradley ahead of SIU in Non-conference SOS.

But regardless, the bottom line is - we need to schedule better, as I have been saying since last summer when our schedule was announced. We have control over the scheduling, so it seems futile now to blame the fact SIU played a D2 school for the plight we find ourselves in.
It is also part of the reason we have seen such a massive loss of fans.

[tornado]

BTW - it is also fair to point out that SIU did NOT schedule Missouri S&T....
The Salukis agreed to be part of the Gulf Coast Showcase Tournament last fall but the organizers of the tourney had to add a couple D-II's to round out the field and so SIU was stuck with this game unless they chose to drop out of the tournament altogether and lose four games off their schedule.

http://bdglobalsports.com/?merc_news=southwest-florida-to-host-inaugural-gulf-coast-showcase

Note also that it is an MVC requirement that all schools in the MVC participate in one of these early season multi-team events - according to this article - and SIU did not find out about the D-II team until late in August - so what were they supposed to do - I'd say give Doug Elgin a call, don't whine about what SIU is doing...

"The Missouri Valley Conference requires all its teams to participate in a multiple-team event."

http://thesouthern.com/sports/college/basketball/mens/saluki-men-set-to-shine-in-gulf-coast-showcase/article_dc0a9ef2-03d1-11e3-b978-001a4bcf887a.html

[BU Bill]

I am tired of the excuse-making from the sportswriters and the team. Just go out and win the games you are supposed to win!
The way I see things, 2 of Bradley's last 3 games are against terrible teams, Loyola and Drake, that are behind Bradley in the standings, have a worse conference record, and have been even worse recently. Drake has lost 10 of their last 14 and Loyola has lost 13 of their last 17 games , and they are both virtually assured of playing on Thursday, and thus have a lot less to ply for. If Bradley can't beat both those teams, I'll be disgusted with them. They don't deserve anything, so stop complaininbg. Just do what was promised, and win.

[peoriaspitfire]

That whole RPI discussion is utterly embarrassing. Perhaps playing better competition will help both the players and coaches improve a little more over time. My preference is to schedule the very best and just win.

[tornado]

agree - back when the RPI actually mattered people said it wasn't worth discussing - now it doesn't even matter unless we can actually tie someone in the standings...

[Da Coach]

Game story from BradleyBraves.com

http://www.bradleybraves.com//ViewArticle.dbml?SPID=1498&DB_OEM_ID=3400&ATCLID=209413187

The game is on MVC-TV Network, and the TV crew features John Rooney on play-by-play, and Rich Zvosec as the color/analyst.
Rich Zvosec is currently an associate athletic director at Arkansas State, but he was a successful head coach and assistant coach for the previous 25 years. He does broadcasts for ESPN and FoxSports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Zvosec

[battlebasset]

...Just do what was promised, and win.

We should have beat the DeadBirds. We should have beat the Hounds. We won't beat WSU. We need to beat Loyola and Drake. It looks like Thursday for us again. Can someone really smart show me where I am wrong?

[Da Coach]

Bradley is listed in Las Vegas as 5 point favorites.
Bradley beat Loyola in Chicago by 9- 63-54, so I think 5 points seems a little low.