Final score- Wichita State 82 Bradley 56

[basketball nut]

Here's my take from someone who has attended every Arch Madness and can speak about how fans feel about the Valley as I get a chance to talk with different fans from different schools. The vast majority opinion is that Wichita has become Creighton. The Blue Jays had a superiority complex about them and Wichita is right there with them. Nobody would be sad to see them lose in St Louis. Also, by a large margin, Marshall is the most hated coach. I absolutely respect what he's done at Wichita. No one respects how he acts. Some Shocker fans want to never leave the Valley because of the tradition but they also like being the big fish in the small pond. Other Shocker fans believe they are better than the Valley and would like to join up with Creighton. By the way no one likes ISU Red either, mostly because of their fans.

I have to agree w/ BJ here. As we talk w/ other teams fans this weekend at the games and here at the hotel they all say the same thing. BU is going to be very good in another year or two. Even after the drubbing we got by WSU Friday night I ended up talking to some WSU fans and they were impressed w/ the way we played and the potential that was there. We were still the third youngest team in the country this year and that was other teams fans stating that not me.
Yes we received the 7th seed but I have to look at it as we tied for 6th place and came real close to having that spot outright while playing against teams playing juniors and seniors for the most part.
This team improved from the standpoint that many of last years starters became our bench players this year.
I'm ready for next season to begin.

[BRADLEY FAN 49]

The 3 game win streak was proven to be a fluke. No real improvement. We beat 3 bad teams is all we did. Wichita State had no seniors, and they absolutely throttled us. Coach Marshall was trying to be very generous to us by emptying his entire bench at the 16 minute mark with a 55-19 lead. The Shockers could have beaten us by 60 points had he left his starters in. We pressed their end of bench players and made up about 12 points. He was letting the young coach know that he was going to call off the dawgz, but Wardle insisted on pressing his bench guys with our starters. I get where Marshall got mad, and I get where Wardle was sending a message of not quitting. We are just fortunate that Marshall was that nice to us. The real take away from this game is that We can claim we are young all we want, but they are just as young, and they are light years better than we are, and that is both player personnel and coaching. We may have won more games this season, but we don't have 1 real win that we can hang our hat on, and say, "we had no business winning that game." The wins were all vs. weak teams & or vs. team that was suffering from major injuries. We are so far from being a contender in a very weak MVC and NCAA Tournament is so far out of sight that it would take a "James Webb Space Telescope" to see it!

How can you say there's no real improvement we've been playing these same valley teams the last 6-7 years and never had a 4 game win streak. As for coach Marshall there is nothing nice about him he took his starters out to rest them if this was a regular season game they would have been in till the two minute mark. As for them throttling us in case you forgot they throttled a pretty good ISU team by 40 some. Evidently you really didn't look to close at the age difference between the two teams here's how it breaks down in minute's played per class per game Bradley Fr. - 90.7, Soph. - 73.7, Jr. - 35.6 Wichita Fr. - 45.6, Soph. - 32.1, - Jr. - 122.3,. Just my opinion I would say that's quite a difference. It takes a while to build something we started in such a hole my guess is by the end of year 4 we will be right there with Wichita State.

[wily coyote]

How can you say there's no real improvement we've been playing these same valley teams the last 6-7 years and never had a 4 game win streak. As for coach Marshall there is nothing nice about him he took his starters out to rest them if this was a regular season game they would have been in till the two minute mark. As for them throttling us in case you forgot they throttled a pretty good ISU team by 40 some. Evidently you really didn't look to close at the age difference between the two teams here's how it breaks down in minute's played per class per game Bradley Fr. - 90.7, Soph. - 73.7, Jr. - 35.6 Wichita Fr. - 45.6, Soph. - 32.1, - Jr. - 122.3,. Just my opinion I would say that's quite a difference. It takes a while to build something we started in such a hole my guess is by the end of year 4 we will be right there with Wichita State.

BRadley fan that is a very good post regarding minutes played and yes it does make a difference when Jrs. get 3 times as many minutes as our Jrs. One thing missing from your post and probably the most important. They are recruiting kids with a much higher celling than we are. Would we like to get those type of kids,you bet your booty we would but are not able to yet. If you compared there kids to ours it is like men vs boys. Can we get there? I sure hope so because if we can't we won't be able to compete against them. Are we going to be able to challenge them next year? Probably not, they do not lose any Srs. everyone's back for them but we may be able to give them better games than this year. I like, many on here, was happy to see the improvement we saw the last month. I loved Geno but did not see much improvement in his 4 yrs. I think we finally get out of Thur. in St.L. and finish above .500 but I don't think WSU will spend a lot of time worrying about us dethroning them yet. I see light at the end of the 6 or 7 year tunnel and it is NOT a train. I'm sure BW and the returning boys will work hard this off season and I'll be honest, I'm looking forward to next season already.