Report from open practice

[tornado]

The open practice is in the books....it was a great chance to see the new players...
lineup sheets were handed out and almost everyone spent half the time with their heads down trying to figure out who the new guys were...

Anyway...
didn't see Chris Reynolds there - he's always been everywhere else so he must have had another assignment...
Both assistant coach Drew Adam & Mike Bargen were out recruiting...
Antoine Pittman had been ill so he did not dress, but Mike Shaw was dressed and went thru the stretching & conditioning but not the physical contact play..

about 300 fans there...that was my count - lots of familiar faces....even served refreshments...
some families with kids - nice to see...
Jim Mattson was there filming for the 6 & 10pm news


significant work on the press both offensively & defensively - I guess Coach knows our young guys will be seeing the press

I'll add more when I get time - anyone else who was there feel free.......

now that people have seen the players- get over to the Pick-em thread and enter a guess...


and one more thing--
contrary to some of the stupid wise cracks I have seen - I CAN guarantee our guys will make a better percentage of layups this season...
The jury is still out on FTs & 3-pointers but some guys were making them... nobody was "in the zone"

[tornado]

Coach Wardle was all business and the players followed suit...
no goofing off and not one player nor one coach ever interacted with any of the fans or even acted like they were there...
(starkly different from the practices the last four year)
Coach was in their face a few times when he needed to be..

If anyone made a big enough mistake they stopped and ran sprints or suicides. He definitely had their attention - and if & when they were wide open he made it clear they should shoot and not pass up a very good shot.

They ran some different offensive and defensive sets and it was obvious that on occasion what was being run was unfamiliar to the players
There were also 4 or 5 practice players who were not part of the team but are part of a scout team helping out in practice - playing the part of "the opponent".

It was a good practice, and well run and showed discipline and the "students" giving respect to the coaches as it should be.
Dave Reynolds was just coming in from the parking deck at about 5:10 - surprised he wasn't there for the whole practice - Kirk Wessler wasn't there at all - tweeting about the World Series- appears to be out of town.

[wily coyote]

Coach Wardle was all business and the players followed suit...
no goofing off and not one player nor one coach ever interacted with any of the fans or even acted like they were there...
(starkly different from the practices the last four year)
Coach was in their face a few times when he needed to be..

If anyone made a big enough mistake they stopped and ran sprints or suicides. He definitely had their attention - and if & when they were wide open he made it clear they should shoot and not pass up a very good shot.

They ran some different offensive and defensive sets and it was obvious that on occasion what was being run was unfamiliar to the players
There were also 4 or 5 practice players who were not part of the team but are part of a scout team helping out in practice - playing the part of "the opponent".

It was a good practice, and well run and showed discipline and the "students" giving respect to the coaches as it should be.
Dave Reynolds was just coming in from the parking deck at about 5:10 - surprised he wasn't there for the whole practice - Kirk Wessler wasn't there at all - tweeting about the World Series- appears to be out of town.

Here we go again. Don't think Coach missed Dave being late and Kirk was there .I spoke to him for about 5 minutes. Please you need to get your story straight. Get on his ass when you feel the need to but don't tell untruths.

[mvcfan]

This above post better be deleted. Geno Ford must have sent you!

[tornado]

sorry - musta missed it...just calling it as I saw it - and I looked & didn't see him.. but thanks for your report...
Do know that he & DR showed up 45 minutes to an hour late for the MVC Media event Tuesday- something that I guarantee wouldn't have happened when Geno was coach.
Any time he's at an Illini game or a Cubs game he tweets 100 times about what's going on and columns about BU, Geno, and Mike Cross were commonplace 'til Wardle was hired, then he's gone silent and nothing whatsoever on BU... hasn't tweeted or written about Bradley in weeks - and didn't see anything about the practice, did you? He's lost interest? So be it. But it was a nice event for fans and drew twice what a similar event drew for Geno...which btw-Kirk was at and reported ..
Again - just calling it as I see it. All this talk that we're obsessed with what they write...I guess depends on how you view "obsessed"..
I recommend you try something - use the search feature to find out how many times in the past year he's even been mentioned in one of our threads.
You'll find the answer is about 50 times this year - and just for comparison, that's fewer times than Molinari's name or Versace's name or even Gregg Marshall's name has been brought up in a thread...so I suppose we're all obsessed about them, too?
Nope, obsessed is if we had 700 page threads about every word he writes ()
Kirk was into Bradley basketball in certain former seasons - even meeting the coach for lunch to write articles hyping him up...
The Hoops section is generally out by the first couple weeks in November - so we'll soon get some coverage.
Anyway - I kinda knew it would always spark up conversation if we mentioned Kirk.

Oh, and btw- I have posted more narrative & description on what actually happened at the practice, and at a dozen other Bradley things this fall than anyone else has, you see - the only obsession I have IS Bradley basketball -
nobody's forced to read any of it and if you think anything I said is wrong, then that's what's great about message boards - that you are free to ignore or say what you want or correct it. But heck, if it weren't for the reports here on BradleyFans - I swear, there's be fans who don't even know the season's starting or that we have a new coach given the paucity of coverage...
if you wanna talk strange obsession find the 700-page threads or go read how many times Kirk & Dave pumped up Geno despite how horribly bad we were - I am not the only one that saw it that way...

[lefty]

Have you emailed DR and/or KW regarding coverage? I'm sure they would answer you. I don't know that it's fair to judge others motives??¦.

And T??¦??¦..don't you think there are other things we should all be more obsessed about than BU basketball?

[tornado]

nope- never judged others' motives just pointing out things that are obvious...
...and I am just a fan with an opinion...
he's the one getting paid to cover Bradley basketball and as I am sure you know, I have plenty of other things to keep me busy

[tornado]

just talked with another long time knowledgable fan who was also there yesterday and who had been to Geno Ford practices...
and the single thing that impressed him most was the demeanor and way Brian Wardle runs his practice form the time he enters the gym.

No nonsense, stern, all-business, with the players' compliance & proper results expected, and zero goofing off...and of course the players follow suit...no talking back or excuses, no eyes rolling, and pretty substantial effort - even to the point of VIGOROUS battles & skirmishes on the floor for loose balls - even the walk-ons battling and fighting each other scrambling on the floor long after the whistle had blown!

We still don't know it's gonna go against a true opponent - I remember years when we looked great in the pre-season and Red-White - then had a bad year...
(example - 2003, JL's 2nd yr & senior year for Gilbert, Gillingham, Cello - there were lots of oohs & ahhhs at the scrimmage, but as the season progressed, and injuries played a huge part, as well as the players kinda "mutinied" and wouldn't play the system, wanting to walk it up Molinari-style- we ended in disappointing fashion)
and other times when we looked shaky yet turned out to have a good season.

And repeatedly most of the stories on the MVC preseason poll cite how the preseason poll actually gets it right no more than 50-50!!
They get most teams in the general ball park but they are wrong as often as they are right.

[mvcfan]

So injuries can be used as an excuse? I get confused on what can be said about some coaches and what can's be said about others.

[tornado]

people do all the time (how'd the Bulls do the years they didn't have MJ?)
and it is a legitimate topic if it is relevant to the inability of a team to play at full strength

[Buesch N Chips]

The polemics are out early this season. Things must be slow over yonder. This is a time where we should all be in agreement. The sacrificial lambs are gone. Wardle has a clean slate and beaucoup honeymoon time. There's nothing to be upset with, unless people choose to fight the same fights they've been battling since 2010.

[Da Coach]

people choose to fight the same fights they've been battling since 2010.

And amazingly, some are still defending those moves that caused all the unprecedented damage...

[Buesch N Chips]

And amazingly, some are still defending those moves that caused all the unprecedented damage...

All of that is moot now. As Karl Rove once said, let's not relitigate the past.

[Da Coach]

Here is another well accepted quote:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
...George Santayana

[Buesch N Chips]

Here is another well accepted quote:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
...George Santayana

That was also the mantra of Jim Jones.