Hoops insert articles

[tornado]

The Hoops insert will be in the PJStar Thursday but some of the articles are already available online

Meet the team

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/meet-2016-17-bradley-mens-basketball-team

The schedule

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/bradley-mens-basketball-schedule

The returnees

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/foundation-built-bradley-mens-basketball-hopes-for-upward-mobility

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/tough-year-can-only-strengthen-bradley-returnees

Another big freshman class

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/hoops-another-big-freshman-class-figures-to-contribute

Getting to the point (BU point guards)

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/hoops-getting-to-point-of-matter

(again my beef here to the writers is this 1st line - "It became apparent early last season that point guard was a trouble spot for Bradley basketball"
..no, it became apparent to every fan in existence four full years earlier but for some reason nobody but the posters here ever mentioned it)

Bradley transfers (Foster & McGlaston)

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/hoops-bradley-transfers-hungry-to-return-to-court

More... bamboo?

http://www.pjstar.com/sports/20161109/wessler-bradley-seeing-benefits-from-last-years-rough-schedule

Other local schools - WIU, ICC (mentions of Limestone's Dixon-Williams and TF South's Stinson), Eureka

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/guard-combo-leads-western-illinois-men

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/icc-men-will-have-lot-of-backcourt-options

http://www.pjstar.com/special/20161109/area-faces-will-help-eureka-men-keep-momentum

[tornado]

one particular thought as I read all those articles...

In the one on Bradley's schedule are two comments...

"It wasn’t the schedule Wardle would have chosen to play with such a young team.
Contracts for the toughest games had been signed under previous coach Geno Ford in anticipation of a veteran Bradley roster"

and

"Fans had a hard time coping with a 5-27 season.."


First - Maybe someone had a hard time but I haven't met a single Bradley fan yet who says a word about having a hard time with last year's record. Quite the contrary - everyone knows why the record is bad and fully accepts it was unavoidable given the circumstances laid in the laps of Chris Reynolds & Brian Wardle and most fans even enjoyed watching the development of all our new guys even despite all the losses.

Last fall we read that the Arizona game was the only one left behind by Geno and that was gonna be a loss no matter what.
...And the games vs. Ole Miss, TCU and others were all winnable and were valuable challenges and were secured by Chris Reynolds & Brian Wardle.
The Virginia game and Boise State were handed to us because of the tourney and MWC/MVC Challenge and had nothing to do with Geno scheduling them!