Postgame thread- Bradley 64 Loyola 47

[Da Coach]

One more article, from the Sun Times--

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/colleges/673067,CST-SPT-loy29.article

[BU30]

It was great to meet Da Coach and talk hoops with Minnesota Bob, PA Paul and Braves 12 at Hamiltons before the game. Good win in a building where we have had little success.

[InMnBob1]

I was watching pretty closely the incident with DC and Les. Here's what I thought happened. The team called for play 1 (whatever it is) but it looked like a pick and roll for DC. I think DC got the play wrong because he didn't roll and it left Crouch trapped and he tried to drive as a result and picked up his 3rd foul.

After that play the coach pulled DC and said what play did we call. DC indicated 1 there was a brief discussion and Les said sit down!

So maybe there's another factor in DC's playing time and that is his familiarity and comfort with the actual offensive plays.

[InMnBob1]

Egolf's family--did anyone else notice the large group of family members for Will? They were wearing BU 21 t-shirts. One must be an older brother who was probably 6-10 himself.

[Beninator]

Does Egolf remind anybody else of an old BU alum from my days...Chad Kleine?

Welcome to the board LoneStar.

Egolf has much more upside than to be compared to Chad Kleine.imo

[Beninator]

This team could be a Top 25 team IF (big 'IF') it could ever put 2 halves together. We get on Jim for the frequent substitutions, which I personally think hurts the flow, but at the same time I think he's still figuring out who to play, when to play 'em, and who to play 'em with. DC again has plus minutes, but Jim harped on him for something in the 2nd half and he didn't return. I really hope he was making a basketball point to the big man and not grandstanding for the vocal group pining for DC. But, I digress...a few observations...

Sammy Maniscalco was a tremendous difference maker tonight. He played great defense, was under control at all times on offense, and made things happen on both ends.

As I said before, JL may sub a bit too much, but our depth really wore down Loyola. There were 2 breakaway layups, one by JC and one by Sammy, where Loyola didn't even bother to try and contest, when the probably could have blocked a shot (similar to how Ruffin has). Both times, they gave up at center court and walked down to inbound the ball after our layup. BU also was able to do much more in the 2nd half, partially because of execution, but I think partially because we were fresh and they were tired. We certainly took their best shot early on, but this is a bad Loyola team, and outscoring them by 22 in the 2nd half wasn't a fluke.

Despite some posters on here who are afraid of the city, it's an easy drive, there's plenty of FREE parking, and Hamilton's is less than 5 minutes from the stadium and the parking deck. Tremendous BU representation at Loyola tonight. If there were 1,400 people there, at least 1,000 were BU fans. Very classy move by the Loyola folks to announce updates on the BU soccer game. Very, very classy move. Great to see all the BU folks before and after the game at Hamilton's.

Michigan St won their 'big' game tonight, and have a cupcake Saturday before coming to BU Tuesday. Let's work out the kinks Saturday against SEMO, because it's resume-building time on Tuesday. We beat a terrible team tonight, but it's a road win, so we'll take it.

Well said Bradleybrave.. I think (and hope) that we will see a more consistent team by the end of the season.

[mike radigan]

Egolf's family--did anyone else notice the large group of family members for Will? They were wearing BU 21 t-shirts. One must be an older brother who was probably 6-10 himself.

Will's brother moved to Peoria about 3 weeks ago.

[chitown fanatic]

Two troubling Box score stats

Once again, we were put in a hole last night, and though we pulled it out...I still can't figure out what Jim sees in Matt Salley. One fan mentioned that maybe Jim is helping Matt get past his personal issues from this summer by playing him so he doesn't lose confidence and become even more worthless. This has to be pretty close to the truth, because everyone who has watched BU this year knows this team goes when Collins is in the game. He played a whopping 14 minutes last night...14 MINUTES!!!!! How are we ever going to establish a post offense if our only true center plays 14 MINUTES!!!!????? I am really getting frustrated with Les on this critical point.
Secondly, Ruff played 37 minutes last night....still too many if he wants to have anything left by March. We need TCS to step up and Sam to take more minutes to allow him to rest. sorry to be negative after a road win, but we had no business even being down to a team as bad as Loyola is.

[LoneStar_Brave]

As I remember, a typical Chad K game would involve: no dunks (had no upward mobility), a few key rebounds because he was fundamentally solid on the defensive boards, a good free throw shooter, a 3-pointer or two, and he would take at least 2 charges per game. He was a crowd favorite due to his energy and enthusiasm.

I think Will can do all that plus he has upward mobility and will be a bit bigger once he fills out. (Chad was a 5 year player at BU)

[Bravesfan]

Once again, we were put in a hole last night, and though we pulled it out...I still can't figure out what Jim sees in Matt Salley. One fan mentioned that maybe Jim is helping Matt get past his personal issues from this summer by playing him so he doesn't lose confidence and become even more worthless. This has to be pretty close to the truth, because everyone who has watched BU this year knows this team goes when Collins is in the game. He played a whopping 14 minutes last night...14 MINUTES!!!!! How are we ever going to establish a post offense if our only true center plays 14 MINUTES!!!!????? I am really getting frustrated with Les on this critical point.
Secondly, Ruff played 37 minutes last night....still too many if he wants to have anything left by March. We need TCS to step up and Sam to take more minutes to allow him to rest. sorry to be negative after a road win, but we had no business even being down to a team as bad as Loyola is.

Good points, but it still was a road win, and any team, good or bad, is going to take their best shot at a team they know is good and has the potential to make a postseason run. Bradley is doing very well considering how many new pieces they have to contend with. This team will be really good come January and beyond!

[abesimpson]

My thoughts from the game:

-Loyola simply out-muscled us to lead the first half. They got a lot of points in the paint and rebounds. Polka and Young are thick guys and having Theron on Polka was a mismatch, Sally should have taken him. Loyola could have got a lot more points from their bigs. Collins did a great job defending and he should have played more. I thought it was a great opportunity for Sam S. to match them size-wise, but he got 2 quick fouls and that was it.

-Ruffin and Crouch tried drive too much in the first half, going into traffic and taking bad shots or trying to make passes that got tipped.

-Sam M. played great. The play that stands out was his pas to Crouch for the 3 in the spurt that gave us the lead. He could have taken the 3 himself (and I??™m sure he wanted to in front of his family and friends) but he faked to draw the defender coming out and passed. Great awareness.

-The basket on the side by their band can??™t be regulation size. We shot 33% at it, then 63% on the other side. Loyola went from 53% to 35% after halftime.

-Getting to the game early enough to get seats close to the BU bench was AWESOME! I can??™t imagine what you have to pay for those in Peoria. I pray we play at Gentile again in 2009.

-The intentional foul they called on Singh was garbage. In the second half, we had a break away( I think it was Warren) and a Loyola player literally grabbed him with both hands and pulled him out of bounds-where was that intentional?

Overall, good comeback win. We can??™t wait 5 minutes to score our first points against Michigan St. though??¦.

[houstontxbrave]

I am very happy we were able to come back and get this road win, obviously I was very worried about this road game.

But, we better start bringing it for an entire 40 minutes. I understand that there was a lot of travel issues JL addressed in his post game but excuses are just those, excuses. I really believe if Loyola were deeper and would not have run out of energy, about the same time we took over the game, this game might not have ended in the blow out it ended up being.

I do not think Sallys minutes are going to fall off, he brings things that JL obviously wants. DC's minutes will increase but Sally will continue to play and likely heavy minutes.

Overall a road win is very important. On to SEMO and lets get 2 in a row.

[tornado]

Will's brother moved to Peoria about 3 weeks ago.

That's great to hear...I hope to be able to meet him some day...
But I can tell the BU faithful that many of the people looking in on BradleyFans.com through the day are logging on from sites from Alaska (something the mods have the ability to discern).
So it is great that Will Egolf has brought some fine Braves fans in from our 49th state!

[abesimpson]

Forgot to mention I didn't see Lavin on the bench last night. It looked like everyone else was there. Is he in trouble for anything?

[Les is More]

Regarding attendance- the band had more "loyolaity" than the rest of their fans (and horrible student section- it was laughable). but it was an extremely nice jesture to announce the soccer score.

I am a little worried about the big men- we got handled pretty easily down below. I was very impressed with TW's presence downlow. He isnt the biggest guy, but he sure did muscle up down in the post.

Is DC a man or mammuth?