Recruting

[wizard1]

All else aside, it has now become obvious that our primary problem, BY FAR, is the talent, strength, skill, & toughness of our players. With a couple of exceptions, we have not recruited players that are MVC or higher quality players. Our guys look like low level Divn 1 nice boys and no matter what we teach, coach, motivate, or otherwise do, BU will not succeed and will continue to be mediocre at best until we completely overhaul our recruiting philosophy.
This is not simply a function of effort. I'm sure we work hard, travel endlessly, etc. What we need is a compete change in what kind of player we are looking for and the talent & skill level they must have. This is not going to be easy but it must happen iif BU is to turn things around. We need to go after top level JC players and kids who dominate their high school games. We need bigs who are big, strong, can dominate inside, and have a mean streak in them. Nice boys who average 12 to 15 per high school game and don't play fearlessly and tough are not going to fill the bill,IMO.
Wizard

[Da Coach]

Maybe a few players like Marcellus Sommerville, Daniel Ruffin, Jeremy Crouch, Zach Andrews, Tony Bennett, Will Franklin, and maybe another Anthony Parker?

[Bradleyfan1]

Let's give these kids a real chance at developing into something special.

Phillip Gilbert had one of the better freshman seasons statistically. But even Parker who IMO is the best mentioned had his best season as a Jr because of a injury plagued sr yr.

Most teams must lean on developing not recruiting. If you arnt Kansas Kentucky Duke or one of the other schools with The McDonald's all amErican game pipeline. You gotta earn it.

Cellus ,Zack, Boogie, Tyshon all some of my favs but 2 and done is hard. I'm all about Wardles 4 yr plan.

I also could not be higher on or more amped up for Elijah Childs out of the gates let alone this time 2018

[Vent]

There are three phases in the recruiting process and some of these phases have an impact on future recruits. The three phases are: 1) Good evaluation of potential players...2) Selling those potential players on your program...3) Improving those players on a year by year basis.

Getting top tier players to Bradley is just not going to happen on a consistent basis. I am really amazed that there are not players in the city of Chicago or suburbs that we can get to come to Bradley. It is more amazing we can't get players from the state Illinois to come here and we must concentrate so heavily on foreign players. I'm sure the foreign players are nice young men, but from what I've seen, there must be players of equal talent in our own state or country.

I was hopeful that Wardle with his ties to the Chicago suburbs, could make Bradley into a program that was represented by good, solid basketball players from the state of Illinois. Throw in a couple local kids, in addition to Kennel, and turn things around. Wardle has a tough job, as all coaches at that level do. I wonder how long they expect season ticket holders to keep paying the prices we pay for the quality of basketball we are watching. I see effort, but the same mistakes we made a year ago, against a much weaker schedule. I'm sure the coaches are frustrated. So are the fans that pay the tab.

[wizard1]

recruiting

BradleyFan 1....I do not disagree with you that development of players is vitally important. Teaching ability may be one of the top skills of any successful coach.
However, in the words of Chuck Orsborn, "You've got to have the horses". All of the teaching, coaching, motivating, etc. by a coach will not create consistant winning basketball at the Mid and Upper levels of Divn.1 without talented, skilled, athletic players. Withoutr these, we are doomed to continual mediocrity.
Wizard

[Vent]

BradleyFan 1....I do not disagree with you that development of players is vitally important. Teaching ability may be one of the top skills of any successful coach.
However, in the words of Chuck Orsborn, "You've got to have the horses". All of the teaching, coaching, motivating, etc. by a coach will not create consistant winning basketball at the Mid and Upper levels of Divn.1 without talented, skilled, athletic players. Withoutr these, we are doomed to continual mediocrity.
Wizard

You hit it right on the head! Dick Versace use to tell me, "Recruiting is 75% of coaching". Ozzie Orsborn would also say, "There are two things you can't coach. "Height and instincts".

[algotrader]

I think we're in a very impossible spot when it comes to recruiting. The facilities we built were supposed to help a ton, and yet here we are.

Unfortunately I believe that the kids coming of age in 2016 are a lot more self centered than ever. They care about one thing and one thing only when it comes to playing basketball.

"I want to play for a huge school and be one of the best".

So these kids take the absolute best offer they can get, even if it guarantees they will be a benchwarmer. They refuse to see it as it is. Thinking that they will prove everyone wrong and be one of the best basketball players at Indiana.

Aaaaand then they sit there. Maybe they get 3 minutes in a blowout game.

Couple this with the fact that these huge schools are playing dirty. You know it. I know it. We all know it. Under the table deals where family members get jobs, athletes magically get fancy cars. I mean that one football player took a photo of the giant stack of cash they straight up gave him to come play football at a certain school.

How do you compete with corruption? You can't. The NCAA looks the other way because the big schools rake in the dough. Then come down hard on schools like Bradley just to make it look like they're still doing their job.

I'm honestly starting to think that if we really want to win the recruiting game we're gonna have to use some dirty tricks. You just can't compete.

Oh and not being a football school hurts too. Maybe we should start a football team

[Vent]

The number of schools that cheat is not as large as you think. Especially when you are talking about expensive gifts. When those types of things are involved you are most often talking about boosters being involved as opposed to the coaches or university. I don't believe Bradley needs to cheat to be competitive enough to win the MVC.

The fact of the matter is we have continuously have made mistakes in evaluating talent. It doesn't matter what sport you are talking about.

[tornado]

Vent- the blueprint for "cheating" is already there since NCAA allows the big schools to make their own rules and choose how much they want to "pay their scholarship athletes"...something they know the smaller schools cannot do.

Indeed those kid that might have helped us, and who were our primary targets last spring (Fraser, McSwain, Bigby-Williams..) are all playing deep, deep bench roles, not even getting in to many games, and when they do - they mainly get garbage minutes and produce little or nothing. But it is what it is...
We will never consistently land the talent that the big schools get, but we sure can do better than 50% FT shooting and 20 turnovers with horrible lazy passes.

[Vent]

I wouldn't call that cheating. It's just like life. People at the top of the ladder make the laws. I think that's a cop out excuse. Gonzaga, Butler, Creighton, Xavier, Dayton and others aren't part of the group that write the rules. I refuse to use the top schools as an excuse that we can't compete with mid-majors.

[BRADLEY FAN 49]

Give coach a chance

You hit it right on the head! Dick Versace use to tell me, "Recruiting is 75% of coaching". Ozzie Orsborn would also say, "There are two things you can't coach. "Height and instincts".

We have to give coach Wardle a chance. He really inherited a mess.

His first class he had no time to recruit, there was a reason why most of those players we're still out there to be picked up.

There was no time to evaluate properly he needed players.

I still think some of those players can develop into good players.

I like Brown and Bar I think they will be good players.

Glasser & Ford put us in at least a 5 year hole give coach a chance.

[Da Coach]

I agree with you '49, I believe most fans will be patient, but we've been told to be patient now for 6 years. My concern is the long term impact that this losing will have on the fan base, the donations and support of the program. The longer we suffer through embarrassing 20 and 30-point losses to teams we used to be able to compete with and beat, the more fans are going to fall off the bandwagon and perhaps never return.
Bradley used to beat Power 6 teams with regularity (Jim Les had a winning record against the Power 6 teams), and now we are getting blown out by 32 points by the team picked a distant last place in the Big 12.

[BRADLEY FAN 49]

I agree with you '49, I believe most fans will be patient, but we've been told to be patient now for 6 years. My concern is the long term impact that this losing will have on the fan base, the donations and support of the program. The longer we suffer through embarrassing 20 and 30-point losses to teams we used to be able to compete with and beat, the more fans are going to fall off the bandwagon and perhaps never return.
Bradley used to beat Power 6 teams with regularity (Jim Les had a winning record against the Power 6 teams), and now we are getting blown out by 32 points by the team picked a distant last place in the Big 12.

I agree but at this point we have no choice there was so much damage done all we can do is hope coach Wardle can fix it.
We can't afford another coaching change if this coach does'nt get it fixed i'm afraid its to late.

[Chico]

We have to give coach Wardle a chance. He really inherited a mess.

His first class he had no time to recruit, there was a reason why most of those players we're still out there to be picked up.

There was no time to evaluate properly he needed players.

I still think some of those players can develop into good players.

I like Brown and Bar I think they will be good players.

Glasser & Ford put us in at least a 5 year hole give coach a chance.

+1

[clnyule26]

We have to give coach Wardle a chance. He really inherited a mess.

His first class he had no time to recruit, there was a reason why most of those players we're still out there to be picked up.

There was no time to evaluate properly he needed players.

I still think some of those players can develop into good players.

I like Brown and Bar I think they will be good players.

Glasser & Ford put us in at least a 5 year hole give coach a chance.

Ronnie Suggs has more than proved he can play well at this level as a freshman. But now he can barely get off the bench. Why? His last game as a freshman he recorded a double double 15&10 while playing out of position at pg. when he's a natural 2 guard. Surely our coaches can work with that kind of foundation and make him better? If he's the worst player on the team now what happened? How did he decline so much? Is it Ronnie or something bigger?