Final score: UNI 64 Bradley 61

[tornado]

I like most of what I see...Bradley leads 34-31
Here's my hopes for the 2nd half...

-keep getting the ball to Kennell and tell him to shoot
-guard and/or doubleteam Jeremy Morgan
-guard but don't foul Bennett Koch
-all other players for UNI have a combined total of only 3 baskets
-keep van Bree (8 pts) & Bar (7 pts) on the court as UNI doesn't seem to have the bigs to guard them

[lefty]

Yup. Decent half for sure. It will help if Brown could get going. I think he's missed 20 shots in a row now?

[Da Coach]

Bradley gets 3 different chances in the final 30 seconds to tie or win the game, and they manage to turn the ball over twice, and miss badly on the final shot.
Final:
Bradley 61
UNI 64

http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=150465

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore?gameId=400918170

Bradley drops to 4-11 and 9-19 overall.

[TNel]

Passing is more instinct than mechanical, so don't know if that will ever improve much. Hard to watch game after game after ... And when will we give up all the double/triple-teaming the ball and giving up WIDE OPEN threes? Same old, same old.

[Da Coach]

I guess I have a problem with the Bradley offensive plan. Nate Kennell was 4-5 from three in the first half, yet he played the entire 2nd half and never took a single shot.
Jayden Hodgson was the MVC's leading 3-point shooter, and yet he never even attempted a 3-point shot in the entire game.
Meanwhile, Bradley was 0-7 from three in the 2nd half, and shot only 32% overall in the 2nd half. McGlaston and Brown took the majority of the team's 18 three pointers, and they were 1-10 combined.
Can anyone explain why we seem to have our worst shooters taking most of the shots?

One other observation- Bradley held their turnovers down (only 13 for the game), mainly because UNI plays a slower tempo game. But they only had 1 turnover in the first 17 minutes of the 2nd half, then they committed 4 turnovers in the final 3 minutes, and should have been credited with another one when they blew that rebound on the missed FT when 2 Bradley players fought over the rebound in the final seconds and UNi came up with it.
It's just frustrating to see them keep making silly mistakes that ensure that they keep failing.

[tornado]

this is a rebuilding year and a lot of what's happening is freshman mistakes and immaturity...
our guys played well enough to win but did get some really tough calls..
We shot well, made our FTs, and greatly outrebounded them...

plus we came all the way back from 10 points down with under 5 minutes to go..
and the difference at that point was simply making freshman mistakes and a couple bad passes.
I am convinced that won't happen next year - so there is hope...

UNI does not lose much at home, have a solid hold on 3rd place and we were inches from sweeping the series against them ..
I actually can't be too hard on our guys this time

[lefty]

I guess I have a problem with the Bradley offensive plan. Nate Kennell was 4-5 from three in the first half, yet he played the entire 2nd half and never took a single shot.
Jayden Hodgson was the MVC's leading 3-point shooter, and yet he never even attempted a 3-point shot in the entire game.
Meanwhile, Bradley was 0-7 from three in the 2nd half, and shot only 32% overall in the 2nd half. McGlaston and Brown took the majority of the team's 18 three pointers, and they were 1-10 combined.
Can anyone explain why we seem to have our worst shooters taking most of the shots?

One other observation- Bradley held their turnovers down (only 13 for the game), mainly because UNI plays a slower tempo game. But they only had 1 turnover in the first 17 minutes of the 2nd half, then they committed 4 turnovers in the final 3 minutes, and should have been credited with another one when they blew that rebound on the missed FT when 2 Bradley players fought over the rebound in the final seconds and UNi came up with it.
It's just frustrating to see them keep making silly mistakes that ensure that they keep failing.

I thought kennell had a 3 in the second half. I think we had 5 3's at half.

UNI did a good job on Kennell on the perimeter too in the second half. Those last 4-5 possessions at the end of the game were killers. I wish we would have on taken a timeout on the possession Brown threw the ball away

[bigjimmy]

Normally the frustrating mistake aren't in close games so these mistakes are even more mind numbinger than normal. And how the he-- does Nate not get a shot in the 2nd half after going 4-5 from 3 in the first half. No excuse for that. Surely a NCAA coach would have tried to draw up a play to get him a shot, right? That's basic offense 101. Now having said that at least we had a chance to win the game against a good team that had been playing well so that's certainly a positive. Hope we can build on that because that's all we have until we actually show we can win back to back games. The count overall stands at 91 games and the League count stands at 57 games.

[Buesch N Chips]

I guess I have a problem with the Bradley offensive plan. Nate Kennell was 4-5 from three in the first half, yet he played the entire 2nd half and never took a single shot.
Jayden Hodgson was the MVC's leading 3-point shooter, and yet he never even attempted a 3-point shot in the entire game.
Meanwhile, Bradley was 0-7 from three in the 2nd half, and shot only 32% overall in the 2nd half. McGlaston and Brown took the majority of the team's 18 three pointers, and they were 1-10 combined.
Can anyone explain why we seem to have our worst shooters taking most of the shots?

One other observation- Bradley held their turnovers down (only 13 for the game), mainly because UNI plays a slower tempo game. But they only had 1 turnover in the first 17 minutes of the 2nd half, then they committed 4 turnovers in the final 3 minutes, and should have been credited with another one when they blew that rebound on the missed FT when 2 Bradley players fought over the rebound in the final seconds and UNi came up with it.
It's just frustrating to see them keep making silly mistakes that ensure that they keep failing.

Are you saying that you think Kennell was told not to shoot in the second half?

[bigjimmy]

They weren't more than a hand full of times that Nate even had the ball in a position where he might have forced up a shot. We didn't set up any plays for him to get a shot. Makes absolutely no sense.

[Dub]

We are close. I'd love to see something positive happen to end the season because I'd imagine fatigue is starting to set in from all the losses. Maybe we can win 2 in a row yet this yr.... or get a win in stl. I did like the fight in the last 6 min of this game.

[wizard1]

Final Score: UNI 64;BU 61

Re: 2nd half with our best 3 point shooters, Kennel and Hodgson, not shooting. The reason for this is very simple: Our coaches do not know how to set up an offense that frees up our best shooters for a shot. We are not able to open up a good "look" for them against even an average defense. We can't "clear a side" and we almost never run anyone along the base line and then swing the ball to them. All we do is dribble around the perimeter. IMO, next year will be more of the same. Ho-Hum!
Wizard

[Da Coach]

I thought kennell had a 3 in the second half. I think we had 5 3's at half.

UNI did a good job on Kennell on the perimeter too in the second half. Those last 4-5 possessions at the end of the game were killers. I wish we would have on taken a timeout on the possession Brown threw the ball away

According to the official stats, Bradley was 0-7 from three in the 2nd half (they were 6-11 in the first half)-

http://unipanthers.com/boxscore.aspx?path=mbball&id=4302

Nate Kennell had 12 points at the half, and ended up with 13. He made only a free throw in the 2nd half-

https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/832045691878903809

Our offense is not hard for opponents to defend on the perimeter, since we pass so poorly, and set very few high screens. As far as I can see, we do not run any effective offensive sets to try to get an open perimeter shot for our better shooters.

[Da Coach]

Are you saying that you think Kennell was told not to shoot in the second half?

No, not at all. I am saying that when we have high-percentage shooters like Kennell & Hodgson making shots, we seem to go away from that, and make little effort to get them the same shots in the second half. The end result is that Bradley was 6-11 from three in the first half, and 0-7 in the second half, and Bradley shot 13-27 in the first half, and 8-25 (32%) from the field in the 2nd half. And neither Kennell nor Hodgson attempted a single three in the 2nd half. With the game on the line in the final several minutes, how hard would it have been to maybe get one of those guys a shot?
In the last 7 minutes of the game, the only basket by Bradley was a dunk by Donte Thomas. Otherwise, every shot attempt in the final 7 minutes was made by either McGlaston or Brown, who were a combined 7-24, and 1-10 from three on the night.

I guess I am just frustrated with all the losing (now 9 of the last 10).

[algotrader]

I've seen quite a number of games where we showed promise. Where we have played and even beaten some pretty good teams for half or most of the game. Our problem is consistency. I feel like this team is getting more criticism than the Geno Ford days which I don't think is justified.

Its the 2nd year.

We had a president who wanted to demote us to D3.

Things were going really bad for quite a number of years.

We switched coaches _yet again_ and completely ruined our recruiting even moreso than it already was for awhile.

Its going to take time. I see so much panicking. We're not good but I also expected us to not be good. Again, we're not even done with year 2. You never know, next year we could finally unlock what is needed to play consistently. Because again, I have seen promising things. The talent is there, the players just need to apply it for the entire game.