Emarion Ellis has left the Bradley program, and is "pursuing other opportunities".

[houstonbrave]

One correction-this wasn’t really Ellis’s third school. He committed to Texas when Shaka Smart was the coach and before going there Shaka left and went to Marquette and Ellis followed him there. We definitely have work to do in managing the portal. We’ve done well with Transfers like Duke and Christian but this year has been a real miss. These seem to have been players trading up from their prior school vs trading down from 4 star prospect at a big school which seems to be where Pettigrw and Ellis were coming from.

[Landof10thcoaches]

He was a potential guy coming in and it’s very unfortunate he didn’t work out. He is still not healthy in my opinion. If he is upset a walk on played ahead of him then that’s on him. The walk on plays hard and can hit an open jump shot. I am not mad that he left the team because who wants a guy who does not want to be a team player. I would have to say our lead recruiter needs to be responsible for these mistakes he is bring to the program.

[BleedRed4]

No matter what program it is- a walk on playing over a scholarship player would raise eyebrows anywhere it happens. Cade has been here 3-4 years, pretty sure Ellis has more points in the few games he’s played than Cade has of his whole career. This is a loss for Bradley basketball and not only BU but for the people who paid the NIL $. If we don’t care about players getting paid the $ we pay them to come here then we should start playing Linke, Beliew, Hennessey because they are “team players”

[Da Coach]

No matter what program it is- a walk on playing over a scholarship player would raise eyebrows anywhere it happens. Cade has been here 3-4 years, pretty sure Ellis has more points in the few games he’s played than Cade has of his whole career. This is a loss for Bradley basketball and not only BU but for the people who paid the NIL $. If we don’t care about players getting paid the $ we pay them to come here then we should start playing Linke, Beliew, Hennessey because they are “team players”

I think the coach plays who he thinks gives him the best chance at winning games, and building his vision of a winning culture. If he was unsuccessful, then I could see people criticizing his decisions. But he's been very successful... More titles than any other MVC program, more MVC tournament wins than any MVC team, more in-season tournament wins than any other team, respected by other coaches, and I don't recall many legal or disciplinary issues. He's earned the respect he has, imo.

[NashvilleBU]

Another disappointing miss in the transfer portal…definitely transferred after a walk-on took his 9-10th man spot on the rotation.

He was a negative on offense…couldn’t shoot and only drive which limited our offense. We really need to find a guard in the portal as a mid year transfer.

[BleedRed4]

DC- I completely agree Wardle has earned the respect. He has done great things for the program and without him we might not have made it to where we have since he’s been here. At the end of the day, he is the head coach and evaluated them to come play here, so solely blaming a player for leaving is a bit unfair. Players aren’t doing the recruiting- coaches are. I think we can all agree we need to do better as far as recruiting and finding what we need.
We struggle to navigate through the portal




.

[houstonbrave]

Nobody is coming mid-year. This is our team.

[Landof10thcoaches]

One thing fans don’t understand is that coach wants guys that want to work hard and get better. You stop working you start watching. Guys that left that were good mast, Roberts and zek got more cash then our Deals. So for the guys complaining about that it’s like eating at Logan’s roadhouse or Alexander’s what are you picking? I am sure everyone won’t leave your job for 100,000 more at your next job. Portal is not a good option yet for Bradley. Juco and high school to build up the depth chart. Portal is for the big time schools.

[Da Coach]

...
We struggle to navigate through the portal

I agree the portal has been a failure this year. There's still hope that Kyle Thomas can develop into an effective post player. Wardle had some nice things to say about Kyle on the post-game segment (spending more time in the gym working on his own).
We saw other big guys develop under Wardle and this staff, like Darius Hannah, Ari Boya, Koch Bar, and others.
And there have been portal successes in past years like Terry Roberts, Mikey Howell, Duke Deen, and Christian Davis. Let's hope this year's failure was an outlier.

[ManMythLegend]

Disappointing news for a player who...to put it bluntly...was disappointing. Here's my two cents. Did we miss in the portal? Yeah. But that's the gamble you take with kids who didn't stick at other programs. Will we miss either of the two players who decided to quit on their team?? Maybe. BUT I believe they both left because they didn't fit the culture. Pettigrew I didn't get to see much of. But from what I've heard he wasn't a fit for the program. Ellis from what I saw didn't play great defense and he was limited on offense. I would have liked to see Ellis stay here for at least another year and prove what he had. But let's be honest, we know BW demands effort and defense in order to earn playing time. If you're not doing that and YOU decide that you're not willing to play within the parameters of the program, so you'll pack your bags.... well...bye. I'd rather have a coach who wants to build a culture (and has been successful). The day we start letting kids who only care about themselves decide their own playing opportunities is the day this program goes to shit.

And let's please stop with any comparison to Terry Roberts. The situations could not be more different. Give me players with more heart and slightly less athleticism and I'll take them all day over kids who think they deserve playing time because of the school they transferred from or what their high school ranking was.

[basketball nut]

I think the coach plays who he thinks gives him the best chance at winning games, and building his vision of a winning culture. If he was unsuccessful, then I could see people criticizing his decisions. But he's been very successful... More titles than any other MVC program, more MVC tournament wins than any MVC team, more in-season tournament wins than any other team, respected by other coaches, and I don't recall many legal or disciplinary issues. He's earned the respect he has, imo.

Very well said. As has been said before we thought we were getting really good players last spring. Blame whoever but it is the player who decides if he is going to give 100% for the team or if he wants to play for himself.
Can we do better in recruiting players, especially from the portal? Certainly but we also lost our lead recruiter a year ago and now need to reestablish contacts.
I'm not sure who our lead recruiter even is now.

[Dub]

I trust the staff on this one. Generally speaking, we don’t have the details behind this. We do know from comments that attitude and effort had him in the doghouse. He hadn’t yet found a way to help our team…

I’m confident that everyone, staff included, was hoping he would have a positive response to the discipline.

our culture is everything in this program. We do not want to regress to a soft culture again guys, we’ve seen that and there’s no fun to be had.

[Stryker]

It's clear Ellis wasn't what we all expected. Didn't work out. I was hoping for an actual 4 star player, and he wasn't that. Maybe he can be that at some point, but he has been far from that this year. Yes the staff failed in the portal this year.

All I care about right now is that program retains Hickman and Hannah going forward, and the program doesn't have valuable players leaving the team at the end of the season like last year.

[BleedRed4]

“take a kid with more heart than athleticism..” Let’s just start Cade then, kids got a lot of heart but athleticism isn’t as prominent as our other players. Are we trying to win games, conference, conference tourney or are we going to try and prove points to our kids by sitting them and playing walk ons?

[egib52]

“BU Freak” - you nailed it!
Some should stop blaming the kids and start hold the coaching staff accountable.
Zek left, did he not like discipline either?
Reink left, Terry left, Jason Kent left to name a few- so does it solely come down on the kids?

Zek, Reink, Terry all left for a combo of $$$ and exposure. Tough to blame the coaches.