Kirk Wessler starting to turn negative

[Da Coach]

Kirk Wessler just posted perhaps the harshest criticism-filled column yet directed at Bradley and Geno Ford's awful offense-

http://www.pjstar.com/article/20141228/SPORTS/141229330/12701/SPORTS

A couple of Kirk's comments:
"The defense has been good, not great."

And Bradley has no margin for error on the defensive end, because the offense has been horrible.
Ford didn’t give a grade to the offense.
Mine: F.

Overall, Bradley’s grade right now is a D. And that’s nowhere near acceptable.

My only comment- what took you so long? These problems have been going on for 3 1/2 years. Lots of people have noticed, but apparently not you...until now.

[tornado]

Kirk has been reading his employer's own editorial pages...and he knows now what corner to position himself into in order to stay relevant..

btw - as expected he recaps all the injury excuses once again...and as expected, he fails to even mention that injuries also caused
UIC's starting center & BEST player & leading scorer to combined for ZERO points Sunday ....and that we were playing at home
against the Horizon team with the worst record and still couldn't put them away despite them committing almost 20 turnovers
and sending us to the FT line an incredible 40 times.
Either way - I think he senses what's going to happen soon, and he's finally changing his tune a bit so he won't look like he's clueless about it when it happens.

One other thing....
read the explanation Kirk & Geno give for how badly our guys continue to miss layups...
"It is hard to imagine a team with so much size and athleticism being unable to score inside.
Bradley does a decent job of getting the ball to the post, but repeatedly fails to convert.
..“We came into the game ranked 348 out of 350 (Division I) teams in 2-point shooting,” Ford said.
“All my life, I never had anybody with some great insight secret how to make a shot from one foot.
You’ve just got to concentrate and get it in the basket.
There’s only so much you can do when the guy’s got the ball a foot away. You’ve just got to make it.”

Again - not to beat a dead horse but...
Didn't Geno watch any of these guys when they he was recruiting them? Everyone should have seen they were poor shooters and low scorers!
Didn't he look at their stats when they were in juco or high school?
How can he act like he's stunned about their poor FG shooting when it's right in their stats
for years leading up to Geno offering them a scholarship and bringing them in to Bradley!

Examples...
1) Xzavier Taylor (per IHSA web site) -
in 2013 he only hit 50% from the floor - amazingly low for a 6-9 high schooler who takes nothing but layups. PLUS he was 30-90 (33.3%) on FT's
2) likewise Josh Cunningham - who took nearly all his shots from close range - hits only 46%
3) in two seasons at Illinois Mike Shaw's FG% was 33% & his FT% was 41.7% - did that completely escape our coaches?
Even in high school he shot poorly and scored only 13 ppg as a senior.
4) Jermaine Morgan's juco stats are easily available for anyone to see, and they mirror his HS stats - low scoring, can't finish around the hoop.
His HS stats are also on the IHSA site since his Whitney Young teams were at Carver in 2009 & 2010.
In 2010, he averaged just 4.4 ppg & 50% shooting - in 2009 just 2 ppg
...sorry - can't buy the "astounded by the bad shooting"-excuse, since everyone should have seen this coming...

[tornado]

Here's what I see as the main difference between 2002-2011, and now (2011-2015) - the Jim Les era vs. the Geno Ford era

- formerly ...
when we reached February,
20 games into the season,
some fans were disappointed and upset that we were out of contention,
and there was a perception that we had nothing to look forward to for the rest of the season...
(although we still played well enough to stay out of Thursday all but once after 2004 & still frequently beat top teams and drew 10,000-11,400)

-now....
when we reached December,
10-12 games into the season,
an enormous number of long time & supportive fans were disappointed and upset that we were out of contention,
and there was a perception that we had nothing to look forward to for the rest of the season...
(now we perpetually play Thursday, never beat top teams, regularly drawing under 5,000)


With the Bulls & Blackhawks exciting and doing well - expect attendance & interest to plummet further if that's even possible



BTW - suddenly as if he finally sees what he's been loking right at for 3.5 years and has NOT seen - Kirk Wessler is surprisingly negative

https://twitter.com/KirkWessler/status/550389817297866752

https://twitter.com/KirkWessler/status/550393469911703552

he's even down on....get ready ...the record defense he just got done touting as better than Mo's defense

https://twitter.com/KirkWessler/status/550393677731086337

[Da Coach]

Nice to see Kirk went to the game. maybe he'll file a column about it. He has strangely been missing from many of the Bradley games this year.