Final: Bradley 69 Truman State 47

[Big Mike]

Bradley 3-16 from three.

[Stryker]

Why is Kyle Thomas getting minutes? He just had three really bad shots...not sure what is going on.

[Big Mike]

I think Meta is in the doghouse...

[Big Mike]

Braves 7-28 from three....over 4 minutes scoreless....

[Da Coach]

Final score- Bradley 69 Truman State 47- https://bradleybraves.com/sidearmstats/mbball/media

Bradley lead by 3, 45-42 with 11:30 left, and outscored TSU 24-5 the final 11:30.
Truman State went the final 6:59 without scoring.

[BUBraves2006]

- Won by 20
- Hickman returned and got minutes
- After a really rough first few possessions, the ghost of Kyle Thomas played very well defensively
- Burch showed some great tenacity when he was having a lot of trouble shooting

We shot terribly and still won fairly easily - just not going to complain too much about it

Let's go to the Valley

[bradleyfan124]

I could not make it to the game. Flu..Anybody know why Ellis didn't play? He must really be in the doghouse

[BUfan17]

Bad shooting night but still won a game that should be a given.

It was nice to see Thomas at least play some meaningful minutes, but why no Ellis? I really don't understand Wardle's rotation this year, it seems to be all over the place.

[Bradley8792]

17 offensive rebounds and 20 second chance points really helped. Nice that we only had 7 turnovers and held them to 4 threes.

[houstonbrave]

I actually think Brian’s rotations are understandable. If you don’t play hard,play defense and play smart you don’t play. You don’t play even if you are more talented than Hardtke if he practices smarter and harder. That may frustrate folks and may even lose a few games but no discipline and no implications have been practiced before -see Geno Ford era. Not saying this year will be great but Brian’s strategy has worked. Recruiting needs focus-particularly with respect to the portal…

[tomahawk chop]

I think Thomas has more skills then Jonovic and wish he had played more in the non. conf. season. Hard to understand the reasoning on giving minutes to walkons instead of more for scholarship players. This is not a good sign of players we brought in from the portal plus I would rather give more minutes to Burch and Atlason , they are the future. We shot the ball very poorly tonight both from the field and the free throw line. Leons missed 2 dunks, one layup and a ton of free throws. He could have scored 25 points tonight . We were terrible on offense against a mediocre team. I want to see the team that beat UAB on the road because the one I have seen lately is not even close to that same team.

[BUBraves2006]

I actually think Brian’s rotations are understandable. If you don’t play hard,play defense and play smart you don’t play. You don’t play even if you are more talented than Hardtke if he practices smarter and harder. That may frustrate folks and may even lose a few games but no discipline and no implications have been practiced before -see Geno Ford era. Not saying this year will be great but Brian’s strategy has worked. Recruiting needs focus-particularly with respect to the portal…

Somebody gets it!

Brian went at great length to say that "certain players" didn't show up after the break ready to play and their minutes could be taken away as a result of it.

I grow tired of the incessant whining about the recruiting when basically none of us are there day in and day out. Would you really be happier if we had more "depth" and Pettigrew was here but he was tearing the team apart because he was a bad apple? (Hypothetical, not saying he necessarily was that way) Should we just throw guys out there who clearly can't play just because they have a scholarship and as a result are "supposed" to get minutes?

Brian also spoke for awhile in last game's postgame chat to explain how he's still trying to figure out what buttons to push with these guys because his motivational tactics that have often worked on past teams don't seem to always resonate with this crew. He's learning with this group just as they also are learning.

So, to the question "why are the rotations so weird" - the answer is, he's got a lot of guys who aren't bringing it every night and hasn't found the mix yet to get the most out of the whole roster, but he's trying to find it.

I also think there's a massive difference between saying "we were terrible on offense" versus "we shot terribly on offense". If you're getting open shots and you just miss them, that's actually good offense and poor execution. We shouldn't confuse the two.

[Southside]

I think Thomas has more skills then Jonovic and wish he had played more in the non. conf. season. Hard to understand the reasoning on giving minutes to walkons instead of more for scholarship players. This is not a good sign of players we brought in from the portal plus I would rather give more minutes to Burch and Atlason , they are the future. We shot the ball very poorly tonight both from the field and the free throw line. Leons missed 2 dunks, one layup and a ton of free throws. He could have scored 25 points tonight . We were terrible on offense against a mediocre team. I want to see the team that beat UAB on the road because the one I have seen lately is not even close to that same team.

BW had enough of Burch's defense tonight. When he came off the floor, he gave him the side stare for about 20 seconds. He was also getting on Meta and Atlason. He was obviously making a point of playing smart and hard. I loved seeing it.

[bigjimmy]

If people only see the end of the game score and think we blew Truman State out they would be mistaken. They don't have a lot of talent but what they do have is a system that is consistent and they are always playing hard, 2 things that we will need to improve on if we're going to have a chance at success in the Valley. A couple of other things that we need to keep working on is shot selection and FT shooting which both sucked rocks in this game. When you only have 14 assists on 26 made shots you're just not doing a good job in initiating your offense. How many air balls did we have from 3 tonight? 5 or 6? And none of them had to be put up because of the shot clock running out. As for our FT shooting I'm tired of talking about. It's pretty tough when you can't trust your best player at the end of the game and unless Malevy gets his confidence back teams will foul him at the end of games. And it could cost us some W's. The good stuff was our defense locked them down in the last 10:00. And we did outrebound them by a 42-28 margin, 16 of them on the offensive end. It was good to see Conner get some minutes and hopefully it helps gets his legs back under him. I thought Darius had a good overall game as he had 11 point6s, 9 rebounds, 4 steals and 0 turnovers. At the end of the day we did end our non conference season at 8-3. Not too shabby. Hopefully starting at Valpo on Wednesday our Valley season starts pointing upward.

[Da Coach]

Official box score- https://bradleybraves.com/sports/men...boxscore/21876

Attendance- 4,866
Home average (7 games) - 5,024