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62 BU @ 68 siu...post game
- Thread starter Big Mike
- Start date
Yes and we have been over this a million times....if you choose to be positive and see good things in a game like last nite your a kool aid drinker and if you see negatives your not a fan.
It never ends......
Having watched Coach Les for all these years now, I have grown to admire his willingness to change his style of play to best suit the players he has to work with. Lots of other coaches seem unwilling to do this, in some cases to their own demise(i.e., Coach Mo).
That being said, this team will struggle on any night they do not plat great D, because they do not really have any consistent 3 point threats. Opponents will play a packed in zone, forcing us to do what we don't do well, which is shoot the 3. If someone doesn't develop the ability to shoot the 3 fairly well, we will continue to see what we have the past few games, which is an offense that will struggle to put points on the board, and get beat if we are not playing very good D.
That being said, this team will struggle on any night they do not plat great D, because they do not really have any consistent 3 point threats. Opponents will play a packed in zone, forcing us to do what we don't do well, which is shoot the 3. If someone doesn't develop the ability to shoot the 3 fairly well, we will continue to see what we have the past few games, which is an offense that will struggle to put points on the board, and get beat if we are not playing very good D.
I also doesn't help when one of our best 3-point shooters only attempts one.
Braves4Life
New member
Excellent first post! You're right on the money. Looking forward to more of your posts
chitown fanatic
New member
what else "do those terms really mean?" I'll gladly use other euphemisms for what I perceive to be posts that constantly glorify our team's performance regardless of result, if you wish.
Those terms are intended as a putdown by most who use them. Please don't say you haven't intended that with your use of them. You have said you are more objective and are able to see things better than some of us. Others have have gone overboard and stated that those who don't share the negative viewpoint aren't as intelligent as those who do.
And yet, who has been most consistently right about this team's perfromance this season? You call it a surprising overachievement, I think it's a good team, well coached, adjusting to the losses of 2 of their best players that accounts for what we've seen.
What I am amazed by is why some posters react when simple terms like "negative" are used, and claim there are people trying to denigrate their fanhood, and yet nobody has said anything about your fanhood that I can find.
I hate to keep reiterating this, but this site is a pro-Bradley fan site. I simply can't believe anyone is surprised to see fans posting positive thoughts about their team!
If anyone is deeply offended by that, please don't read or post here. We can even suggest other sites where negativity abounds and any kind of shot at the players, team, or coaches is allowed and encouraged.
But here, be warned that there may be messages posted that are not all negative.
And yet, who has been most consistently right about this team's perfromance this season? You call it a surprising overachievement, I think it's a good team, well coached, adjusting to the losses of 2 of their best players that accounts for what we've seen.
What I am amazed by is why some posters react when simple terms like "negative" are used, and claim there are people trying to denigrate their fanhood, and yet nobody has said anything about your fanhood that I can find.
I hate to keep reiterating this, but this site is a pro-Bradley fan site. I simply can't believe anyone is surprised to see fans posting positive thoughts about their team!
If anyone is deeply offended by that, please don't read or post here. We can even suggest other sites where negativity abounds and any kind of shot at the players, team, or coaches is allowed and encouraged.
But here, be warned that there may be messages posted that are not all negative.
Braves4Life
New member
I think you may want to add a link on the main board to the "Anti-Bradley" message board..... Or simply respond to negative posts wth that link
chitown fanatic
New member
Ok, first off, where have I stated that I see things Better than anyone else? secondly, I don't recall claiming that my fanhood was in question. I do recall several of your posts, however, that question various fan's "fanhoods" based on their "negative" posts. As you stated, this is a "pro-Bradley " site, and there's nothing wrong with positive posts. In fact, I'd love it if there were nothing to change on this year's team and I could post like you do...but until we're in 1st place to stay, you should expect the "pro-bradley" site to contain plenty from fans who see both the good and the bad and make it a point to post about it.
MacabreMob
New member
I think you may want to add a link on the main board to the "Anti-Bradley" message board..... Or simply respond to negative posts wth that link
Which one do you want. There are 3 I know of... and that doesn't include a place like other Valley School's Message Board's - we KNOW they're anti-BU.
If anyone needs the links to anti-BU boards, you can PM me. ;-)
I think that the reason some people get bothered by your use of the words 'negative', 'negative Nellies', 'Negnels', 'haters', etc. is because you seem to blindly label any form of critical analysis of the team or its performance as being 'negative', 'bashing', or 'ripping'...and I don't think that is fair in most cases. It is possible to be a supporter, a fan, of this team and still voice your frustrations about the way they play in a given game or stretch of games...those actions are not mutually exclusive of each other..despite what those with a more consistently optimistic perception of this team may believe.
We watch BU struggle, some of us get frustrated and we make comments that this team is a poor 3-point shooting team, a poor freethrow shooting team, that we are offensively challenged, that this team looked awful tonight, etc, etc...and immediately we are told that these are fallacies, that our opinions are somehow without value because we are nothing more than haters, negative Nellies, and bashers...and that we love ripping the team and secretely hope that BU loses every game so we can come out here and rip, bash, and spew our negativism about this team.
All of the BU fans on this board want the team to win...we want them to win every single game they play. That is what makes us Bradley fans. Some of us fans see poor shooting, poor execution, or what we perceive to be poor effort or poor coaching from our team, and we call it how we see it...and maybe we worry that this performance may be part of a trend that may cause us to play worse and lose more games as the season goes on. It's nothing more than our opinion at that particular point in time, as a fan of this team. Others watch the same game and prefer to find things that they see as positives to take away from it...they see a bad night as an aberration, and believe that the outlook for the future is very bright...again, nothing more than their opinion at that particular point in time being voiced as a fan of this team.
In the end, we are all fans of BU basketball...some worry and are more apt to be pessimistic in their day-to-day evaluations of this team...some don't worry and are more likely to be more consistently optimistic. So be it...but the one thing that binds us together is that we are all fans of BU basketball, and we all want this team to succeed. The "Negative Nellies", the "bashers", the "haters", the "Kool-aid drinkers", the "blind optimists", those with "rose-colored glasses"...all of us.
BUBraves2006
New member
Many other posters, including myself, have said the same thing numerous times. It simply doesn't get through that we actually do want Bradley to succeed and maybe we're tired of settling for mediocrity. We want Bradley to win conference championships as much as the next guy ...
There's been some sort of crazy push on the board in the past year or so that any criticism = hatred of BU / hoping for failure. I don't know what changed, as things didn't use to be the way on here.
As I've said many times ... why would people like Chitown/ER3 and other intelligent posters waste their time posting regularly on a message board if they hate BU/want BU to fail?
My other other comment here is that it's simply human nature not to say as much when things go right. When do you hear from your boss? Generally its mostly when things aren't going right or they need something from you. People have to go out of their way to single out good things because that is how our minds are wired. So, just in the sheer fact that we DO all want Bradley to win every game ... there's clearly a lot less to be said when we do what is expected - win. I don't expect a pat on the back when I do my job correctly ... so to somehow make the assumption that all the negativity just comes out because of hatred for BU simply isn't accurate.
I'm a proud Kool-aid, rose colored glasses Bradley fan PERIOD!
I was also ready to lambaste our big with only 6 points, 8 rebounds but when I dug in a bit more they shot 75% from the floor, 3-4. I'm starting to consider that their lack of inside defense aggression may be from a lack of getting the ball on O. I know I have played with ball hogs before and during some stretches I would just give up playing D because what's the use when you never see the ball on O and everybody loves the chance to score. Maybe if we learned how to feed the ball inside and maybe if our bigs would demand the ball we could score in the paint and then just maybe our 3 point shooting would open up. Our guards are not players that can develop consistantly their own shot. Also how many times does it take for our guys to learn that it is very hard to score by the rim if you start your drive at the 3 point line. We need to either start closer or pull up for a mid-range instead of going all the way and creating TOs or worse yet going on the line and bricking it.
In short if we do not establish the ability to score in the paint by our bigs, then our offensive will really depend on creating TOs on D for easy baskets and if that is not happening then we are in big trouble. Our 3 point shooting depends on being able to set our feet and shoot and that only happens when the other team respects your ability to score in the paint. Right now teams do not respect either part of our Offensive game except our ability to slash and by shutting down the lanes that's easy to defend without the other areas of our game.
It's a long season and this team will need to make a few adjustments for the remainder of the season if it wants to finish on the top half of the conference. I say we should start by feeding the big men in the post and getting the ball to TW somewhere closer to the rim so he get to the rim before the weakside guy gets there.
I was also ready to lambaste our big with only 6 points, 8 rebounds but when I dug in a bit more they shot 75% from the floor, 3-4. I'm starting to consider that their lack of inside defense aggression may be from a lack of getting the ball on O. I know I have played with ball hogs before and during some stretches I would just give up playing D because what's the use when you never see the ball on O and everybody loves the chance to score. Maybe if we learned how to feed the ball inside and maybe if our bigs would demand the ball we could score in the paint and then just maybe our 3 point shooting would open up. Our guards are not players that can develop consistantly their own shot. Also how many times does it take for our guys to learn that it is very hard to score by the rim if you start your drive at the 3 point line. We need to either start closer or pull up for a mid-range instead of going all the way and creating TOs or worse yet going on the line and bricking it.
In short if we do not establish the ability to score in the paint by our bigs, then our offensive will really depend on creating TOs on D for easy baskets and if that is not happening then we are in big trouble. Our 3 point shooting depends on being able to set our feet and shoot and that only happens when the other team respects your ability to score in the paint. Right now teams do not respect either part of our Offensive game except our ability to slash and by shutting down the lanes that's easy to defend without the other areas of our game.
It's a long season and this team will need to make a few adjustments for the remainder of the season if it wants to finish on the top half of the conference. I say we should start by feeding the big men in the post and getting the ball to TW somewhere closer to the rim so he get to the rim before the weakside guy gets there.
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I believe our defense was good enough last night to win the game, it"s our offense that is struggling because of the lack of good 3 point shooters and not getting enough inside scoring from our centers. Sam M. is our best outside shooter and is being guarded a lot tougher because the opposition is aware of that, it was so much easier for him last year because he had 6-5 Crouch and 6-5 Warren drawing more attention to them which in turn got him a lot more open looks.
Actually, we did, here is one from this morning with the RPIs of all the Valley teams, courtesy of MacabreMob-
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=112518#post112518
You are welcome to post such information anytime, cpacmel, too.
Realtimerpi was offline since last night and just updated their RPIs for the first time since before yesterday's games. Thus I was unable to post Valley RPI's yesterday and last night.
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_mvc_Men.html
Bradley's RPI now 75.
I don't deny that I am optimistic. But optimistic implies you expect better results than are realistic.
I don't believe it was at all unrealistic to expect Bradley to play well and contend in the MVC even without Warren and Egolf. They are right about where I expected them to be, and that is the definition of realistic and insightful.
bigdaddystuck
New member
I just got back from Carbondale.....way too much fun at BW3 and Pinchs last night! More fun than I had at the game...
We could not have had a worse 1st half last night than we did. Our free throw shooting is beyond bad! And I am sorry, but we did not come out with any intensity. I will be very interested to see who gets the majority of the minutes against UNI. Some players just have not been on lately. I thought we played the best last night when SM was on the bench. I am not slamming him, just saying that we played better when he was out.
I did like how we continued to fight through out the 2nd half. TW and DD really stepped up their games in the 2nd half. As bad as we played, and it was awful, we still fought back. We need to figure out the ft problems, duh!
BTW, just a little upset with the lack of BU fan support at the game. I thought that there would be more fans there due to the fact that we were in 1st place heading down and playing a instate team that we have done poorly against recently!
GO BU!!!
We could not have had a worse 1st half last night than we did. Our free throw shooting is beyond bad! And I am sorry, but we did not come out with any intensity. I will be very interested to see who gets the majority of the minutes against UNI. Some players just have not been on lately. I thought we played the best last night when SM was on the bench. I am not slamming him, just saying that we played better when he was out.
I did like how we continued to fight through out the 2nd half. TW and DD really stepped up their games in the 2nd half. As bad as we played, and it was awful, we still fought back. We need to figure out the ft problems, duh!
BTW, just a little upset with the lack of BU fan support at the game. I thought that there would be more fans there due to the fact that we were in 1st place heading down and playing a instate team that we have done poorly against recently!
GO BU!!!
I agree with all of that! Again, we outscored SIU 18-8 when SM was on the bench. Nothing against him as a player, but it just wasn't his night and I think he is better when not playing the point. TW and DD seemed to be the only players that actually looked to score. Also, was something wrong with TB last night? He should be playing much more than 3 minutes!
But DC....is someones honest assesment of how THAT individual see's the team, its performance and whatever they see that we do well or need improvement on "negative" in the sense I THINK you mean. And I'll ask Chitown the same thing.....is DC's "painting" of what HE sees simple Kool Aid? My answer is no...TWO individuals can see the SAME product in different ways with neither being wrong..
Clearly a FEW...very few IMO.....trash BU, coach Les and this team with some hidden agenda. ( still angry over Les hired vs McClain for ex.) I don't take Chitowns side nor do I take yours but I understand and respect where each one of you is coming from. Call me Switzerland but you BOTH make good arguments......we are not ALL going to see things in the same light.
I also don't think I have found ONE poster on this board that posts fairly regular that has any hidden agenda or hatred, if you will, of BU and the team.
This lack of effort argument is really simple semantics IMO. To me it was a case of play smarter NOT harder.....