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When they are on the court, the players.
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What part of illegal don't you understand? -
No way of knowing that either. I do remember a couple of screens for Nate in the second half but UNI guarded it well Like I said before I thought Nate looked tired the last 8-10 minutes of the game. Give some credit to UNI on their defenseOriginally posted by Chico View PostComment
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It was good to see Kennel hitting shots early, as UNI was leaving him wide open, most likely because in the ISU game he couldn't throw it in the ocean, and was serving up turnovers like the local bakery. Don't get me wrong, Kennel plays hard, I like him ok, but he's very limited, and is a streaky shooter at best. In the end, he's not going to win us games. He did have a chance late in the game, but had a critical turnover on one our last 3 possessions of the game. With a chance to either tie it up or take the lead, he couldn't get his shot off, so he put his head down driving out of control, & threw it away, but I'm sure part of that was his frustration by the combination of UNI's defensive adjustment that shut him down, and he couldn't get his slow winding 3 point shot off. Also, Wardle's offense is not favorable to anything that I can see really, much less running something exotic to get an open look for a player of Kennel's limited ability. There seems to be no real method to Wardle's offensive madness at all in fact. Wardle & staff should have at least tried to come up with a set play or two at least attempting to help get him a couple looks in the early 2nd half to just to see if he could still hit a few.
The are other problems here right now that I can see. Jayden Hodgeson has been hands down, the most consistent & best shooter on this team since the MVC season started, and IMO, he is the best all around basketball player on this team, but for some reason, he is always setting up the others for shots and very rarely gets anybody looking to reciprocate. He has been red hot from beyond the arc, should be attempting far more shots than anyone else on this team?? There is a reason that the others are open more often... because they can't shoot, so why doesn't the coach put a stop to that?? Tell the brick layers to stop throwing up those garbage shots, they are just like turnovers.
The talent definitely must be upgraded and upgraded fast. I'm not giving a pass on the talent on this roster, as the coaches are playing with the hand that they dealt to themselves. A coach should never just give away a $200,000 scholarship ever. I would rather he just went out and signed a few impact juco kids, or a slew of walk-on's that first year, had more scholarships to offer the second, & third years. Hell the record couldn't have been much worse, but we'd be ahead in the long run. The coaching these past 2 seasons has been equally unimpressive IMO. I do like Brown and Hodgeson in the starting backcourt moving forward, Glackston at the 3, we need a 4 man, Koch-Barr at the 5. van Bree & Donte as bigs off the bench. Kennel would make a solid 8th man wing player off the bench (on a good BU team). Beyond that, clean house! Bring in a couple impact juco or 5th year senior kids with the new freshman class. You have to recruit over the guys that are currently playing if you really want to win and be at the top of the MVC, much less be able to get in the NCAA Tournament. None of our current players would have started for any of our NCAA Tournament teams, I don't even know how many would have even seen the floor??? This may sound harsh, but the truth is painful sometimes, and right now, it is what it is!Comment
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but Dean, don't you have to agree that teams with very little talent actually can do well and we see it every year
Right now Drake & SIU are ahead of us and we kinda agree they don't have anyone we would have recruited...
Heck - year in and year out Belmont kicks everyone's butt with kids nobody's ever heard of.
This year they're 19-5 and I have never heard of a single kid on their roster
St. Mary's, Texas-Arlington, Akron (11 consecutive 20-win seasons!!), UNC-W, FGCU and North Dakota State are a couple other programs producing consistent winners witout landing anyone better than what we have...
And here's one more... Green Bay - so we went & hired their coach but have only given the guy 1.5 years of trying to clean up a monumental mess and already we got folks claiming they know how to do a better job like bring in more of the Geno-type-juco non-producers...
I say - stick with Brian Wardle - let him get things done.Comment
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Probably a handful of times. Pretty rare but it does happen.Originally posted by Dub View PostComment
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Tornado, I always like & look forward to reading your posts. You seem to have a good basketball acumen. I absolutely agree that teams can win without all of the so-called ranked recruits. Most of that is nonsense and hype and one of the biggest reasons why we see over 700 transfers annually these days. First off, when you site Belmont, Rick Byrd has been there for a long time and he is a master tactician with a system that he plugs and plays certain prototypes for the various positions in his system. He only recruits skilled kids, good students, and kids from winning programs. There is a method to the man's madness. Texas Arlington's head coach Scott Cross is a former UTA basketball player and he appears to have taken a similar recruiting philosophy; If you can't shoot, we won't recruit. Putting the ball in the basket consistently heals a lot of other blemishes. The other variable is that kids from winning high school programs know how to win, they know what a winning culture looks like, and should be like. It doesn't matter how high a kid can jump, how fast he can run, or how long he is, if he doesn't have skills, or understand the price tag that winning comes with. As for coach Wardle, it looks like he doesn't even know what he wants his system to look like yet. There is no trace of an identity. It seems like he has tried to bring in some nice young men, but nice young men, who can't shoot, pass, or defend it get you fired! We need a team full of guys that can shoot it, pass it, and defend it, or an insanely athletic team that can turn you over 20+ times a night and just out-athletic you every single night. Either way, you must create a winning culture, have a definite identity as a team, and be that team every night, year in and year out, and just constantly be looking for those prototypes that can plug in and play year in and year out. The Duke's, Carolina's, Kansas, and Kentucky's of the world are always going to get those captain obvious top 30 kids in the country. The rankings beyond that are as big a joke as the goofball scouts doing the evaluating, and a crazy crap shoot. Have you ever taken a look at some of those clowns, none of them ever played a day of competitive basketball in their lives. The great coaching staffs don't give that garbage any merit and just get out there and go find basketball players that you they evaluate and believe can fill a role in they're own system. If it were me, and I get fired if my team doesn't win, guess what, I'm getting out and watching all of the recruits I can myself personally, and my assistant coaches would be to. Geno trusted and listened to the wrong people when it came to recruiting, and it got him a bunch of over rated clowns, which in turn got him fired!Originally posted by tornado View Post
A program like ours needs a system guy in order to win on a consistent basis year in, and year out. The jury is definitely out on whether or not Wardle is that guy. It appears he's confused as to what he wants it to look like. Are we an athletic, full court pressing, out athlete you team, or are we a half court sit down and out-skill you, and out-execute you team? Only one thing is clear to me right now, we are neither of those right now!Comment
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Bradley fires 32-3 coaches.What part of illegal don't you understand?Comment
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So.... if they are getting it done with "nobody's" .... it must be purely the COACHING that is DEVELOPING the talent and producing a winning team. T, your post would indicate that if BW was a good coach, we would be winning right now with our "nobody's". I agree, BW deserves at least another year... two more as long as we actually IMPROVE next year. Still remains to be seen...Originally posted by tornado View PostComment
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He didn't say they were getting it done, they are just ahead of the Braves. Mainly because they, and practically every team in the country have more experienced players than Bradley.Originally posted by Braves2006 View PostWhat part of illegal don't you understand?Comment
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Right now we are like a start up jr. college playing 4 year schools........things will get betterComment
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I agree that we need to stick w/ BW. He will turn the program around but we knew it was going to take time and he is doing it the correct way.Originally posted by tornado View Post
By the way different posters say we need to get JC players but last year we were after 2 of the best JC players in the country and missed out on both. One went to Indiana, I understand he doesn't get a lot of playing time and the other to Oregon where he also rides the bench. I'm not saying they wouldn't have helped BU because I'm sure they would have and would be playing more then at the schools they are at now but no guarantees w/ JC players.Comment
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Great Points
Coach Wardle is trying to get the best players and he has tried to get Jucos as tornado says. If we dont get them, that just means they decided to go somewhere else. If we passed on the other jucos, then they didnt meet that quality level that Coach Wardle wants. I am ok with that. We are so much better off with Coach Wardle. If he can get D Brown to come here and Keiffer Sykes to go to UWGB, that tells me he knows talent and he is going to eventually fill the roster with similarly talented players. After 1 full (2nd year of coach wardle's work) recruiting season, look at the new players. So much better than the 1st year recruits, even though the 1st year kids have helped our program get started making the turn for the better. I think our 1st year players were the best out there and we didnt have much of a choice due to timing. I maintain that the former regime, left us in a terrible D1 mess, when they wanted to go to D3. I just hate that so much! The turn around is slowly making progress. It just doesnt happen as fast as we would like. Everything about our program is headed up slowly.Originally posted by basketball nut View PostComment
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Just speculating, but....
we currently sit in a 3 way tie for 7th place (5-11), with TWO games remaining...
and theoretically we could tie Missouri State, SIU or Loyola in W-L record cuz currently they all sit 2 games ahead with 7 wins
- BUT we instantly lose the tiebreaker to Loyola cuz they swept us
- and we also lose the tiebreaker to Missouri State - since even if we split the season series, they have beaten two teams above them in the standings (UNI & LOYOLA) but we have only beaten one (UNI) so we lose that tiebreaker.
HOWEVER - there is a remote chance that if we finish 7-11 and SIU finishes 7-11 (meaning they would have to lose to their final 3 games) and then ....
..we will have a win over a team higher than any they have a win over (UNI) and we'd win the tiebreaker (as defined by MVC) and finish 6th and stay out of Thursday!Comment
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