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I sense a little duplicity going on with the coverage of tonight's game.
The headline for the game story in the PJ Star is "Bradley hopes to rebound against short-handed Illinois State", and in the Pantagraph it is "Depleted ISU 'not feeling sorry for ourselves' with Bradley next".
The headlines, the articles, and the talk on some fan message boards seems to be all about "poor ISU" and their injuries and "poor Dan Muller" who is at such a disadvantage having to deal with such unfair adversity. It is as if they are trying hard to create excuses in advance, in case ISU loses to Bradley.
The reason I say duplicity, is that I remember when Bradley was missing 2 All MVC star players for virtually the entire 2010-11 season due to health issues, and then on top of that, they lost additional starters during that year due to other injuries. Yet, I do not recall a single time the media wrote any sympathetic articles making excuses for what turned out to be the only losing season in Jim Les' final 6 years at Bradley. In fact, there were local writers who completely ignored all the adversity and injuries, and ripped Coach Les for not winning enough and repeatedly demanded his firing.
And the nescient message boarders even went further claiming the injuries and the resulting sub-par season was proof Les needed to be fired, because they claimed he should have known that injuries can happen to star players, and he was derelict in his coaching duties for not recruiting a whole bench full of All MVC-caliber reserves to take their place.
To Jim Les' credit, he never once used his team's injuries as an excuse, and neither is Dan Muller. But I just find it a bit funny now about how much some are dwelling on the inury excuses, when some of them claimed in the past that "injuries are never an excuse".
And one other note debunking this injury storyline- if Keyshawn Evans plays tonight as the current rumors seem to hint, then ISU is really only going to be missing one key player, Phil Fayne, and he is only their 3rd-leading scorer. Bruninga's injury is really not much of a factor, since he has played far fewer minutes in their last 10 games, and his scoring and rebounding are nominal. So the bottom line is that if Evans does play, they are only missing one significant player, their 3rd leading scorer. But let's make all the reporting about this game focus on what a disadvantage Dan Muller and the Redbirds are at with all their injuries.
The headline for the game story in the PJ Star is "Bradley hopes to rebound against short-handed Illinois State", and in the Pantagraph it is "Depleted ISU 'not feeling sorry for ourselves' with Bradley next".
The headlines, the articles, and the talk on some fan message boards seems to be all about "poor ISU" and their injuries and "poor Dan Muller" who is at such a disadvantage having to deal with such unfair adversity. It is as if they are trying hard to create excuses in advance, in case ISU loses to Bradley.
The reason I say duplicity, is that I remember when Bradley was missing 2 All MVC star players for virtually the entire 2010-11 season due to health issues, and then on top of that, they lost additional starters during that year due to other injuries. Yet, I do not recall a single time the media wrote any sympathetic articles making excuses for what turned out to be the only losing season in Jim Les' final 6 years at Bradley. In fact, there were local writers who completely ignored all the adversity and injuries, and ripped Coach Les for not winning enough and repeatedly demanded his firing.
And the nescient message boarders even went further claiming the injuries and the resulting sub-par season was proof Les needed to be fired, because they claimed he should have known that injuries can happen to star players, and he was derelict in his coaching duties for not recruiting a whole bench full of All MVC-caliber reserves to take their place.
To Jim Les' credit, he never once used his team's injuries as an excuse, and neither is Dan Muller. But I just find it a bit funny now about how much some are dwelling on the inury excuses, when some of them claimed in the past that "injuries are never an excuse".
And one other note debunking this injury storyline- if Keyshawn Evans plays tonight as the current rumors seem to hint, then ISU is really only going to be missing one key player, Phil Fayne, and he is only their 3rd-leading scorer. Bruninga's injury is really not much of a factor, since he has played far fewer minutes in their last 10 games, and his scoring and rebounding are nominal. So the bottom line is that if Evans does play, they are only missing one significant player, their 3rd leading scorer. But let's make all the reporting about this game focus on what a disadvantage Dan Muller and the Redbirds are at with all their injuries.
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