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6/1 PJS on Merfeld

Both are great articles.
One thing I noted that was curious was this paragraph from Kirk Wessler's column--
Merfeld brings to Bradley a reputation as a solid and adaptable coach. His 54-91 record at Evansville should reflect more on the school than on Merfeld. Beyond 11,000-seat Roberts Stadium, Evansville's program is resource-challenged. And longtime MVC insiders privately have expressed concern that the perennial shortage of African-American players on the Aces roster may be by institutional design

I don't get why that was thrown into an otherwise very positive and complimentary column about Merfeld. It sounds like he's casually accusing Steve Merfeld of racism!
If what KW is alleging is true, then he and other members of the press should be reporting and investigating this issue much more aggressively. Yet this is the first I have heard this.
Jim Crews had an unusual percentage of non-minorities when he was coach, but that had a lot more to do with the style of play he employed. There is also the location of the school-- probably the farthest in the MVC from major urban population areas.
Also, Merfeld recruited a lot of African-Americans, but a bunch of them have left the team or been kicked off for various reasons. (Maurice Blakey, Tory Robertson, Robert Nelson, Dupree Fletcher, and Marcus Butler are just some of the minority players who have left the team the last few years due to academic, or legal problems).

By the way, I count 7 black players on the 2006-2007 Evansville roster, Merfeld's last team. That's the same or more than on last year's Drake team, Indiana State team, and UNI team. So where is the evidence of this?
 
Hmmmm, DC.... interesting.

KW states "longtime MVC insiders privately have expressed concern". Who might these people be?
 
Duke perennially has more non-minorities on their roster and fewer minorities than many/most D-I teams.
This season Duke has

10 white players and
4 Black players

PLUS-- of the six seniors who left Duke last year ('05-'06) four of them were white as well!

and one of the present Black players is only 1/2 African American as I have seen his family when shown on the televised games and one of his parents is white.

So where is the outrage against Mike Krzyzewski?
http://www.goduke.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&KEY=&SPID=1845&SPSID=22727
 
But Merf has been their head coach for the last 5 years. Any recruiting policy would have been directly attributable to him. Otherwise, how does anyone else at UE have any say in who he or any of the other coaches there recruit? If there is some "institutional design", Merfeld would have had to be part of it.

Note that Lennox Forrester was a player and an assistant there for a long time, and their teams have always featured some very good African-American players. I can list them if anyone cares, but UE is far from the MVC team I would think of if someone thought a Valley team was guilty of institutional bias.
 
I saw over on the ISU board that they are really ripping this choice.
Funny how a school with several successive bad choices for head coach and a perennial bottom feeder should kind of get their own house in order before criticizing a team with consecutive 22 win seasons.

By the way, didn't they have an assistant (Jans), an ex-Chipola junior college coach, who they hired to try to land some of the Chipola talent?
How many did he get?
 
Da Coach said:
By the way, I count 7 black players on the 2006-2007 Evansville roster, Merfeld's last team. That's the same or more than on last year's Drake team, Indiana State team, and UNI team. So where is the evidence of this?
Click to expand...

Hate to nit-pick, but Drake had 9 black players on the team last season.
 
You'll have to help me DUB, because I count fewer than 9, although it is hard due to the fact the pics aren't up on the web site.

Calvin, Grant, Houston, Keita, Stewart, Traora dit Nignan, Young...who else? You can't count Bryant, he left too long ago.

By the way, once they get the kinks out, the new Drake web site is nice and brings it into the 21st century!
 
tornado said:
You'll have to help me DUB, because I count fewer than 9, although it is hard due to the fact the pics aren't up on the web site.

Calvin, Grant, Houston, Keita, Stewart, Traora dit Nignan, Young...who else? You can't count Bryant, he left too long ago.

By the way, once they get the kinks out, the new Drake web site is nice and brings it into the 21st century!
Click to expand...

Why shouldn't I count Bryant? He was talking about the 2006-07 season, and Bryant was on the team for 80% of the season. I suppose that if you want to rephrase it to "at the end of the 2006-07 season", then I'd agree about Bryant. The 9th is Bill Eaddy, a seldom-used freshman forward. Either way, Da Coach's statement was incorrect.

Drake fans were initially enthused about the website, but it's been up for a couple of months, and it still has all the same kinks that it did the day it went up. I don't know if it's a problem in Drake's athletic department, or if it's a problem with the website design firm. I agree it will be nice, IF they ever get the kinks worked out.
 
Average Joe said:
I saw over on the ISU board that they are really ripping this choice.
Funny how a school with several successive bad choices for head coach and a perennial bottom feeder should kind of get their own house in order before criticizing a team with consecutive 22 win seasons.

By the way, didn't they have an assistant (Jans), an ex-Chipola junior college coach, who they hired to try to land some of the Chipola talent?
How many did he get?
Click to expand...

Those comments were tongue-in-cheek on rbf. They were more of a pre-emptive strike against this guy called Reggieman that posts on there from time to time. He was shredding the Parham hiring and has logged on at various times to spout non-sensical BS. This was done in response to that.

I know the remarks on rbf were in jest only and no harm was meant. :lol:
 
dogsrus said:
DC..I took it as a shot at UE NOT Merf.
Click to expand...

That is the way I took it. I don't think the head coach of any team is setting institutional policies.

About a month ago, I was in Evansville and drove past the campus. If you though BU was small, which it is compared to many state schools, UE is tiny. There is a nice complex for their soccer and baseball teams on campus. There were also "Welcome back Marty" billboards around town.
 
DannyCooksey said:
They were more of a pre-emptive strike against this guy called Reggieman that posts on there from time to time. He was shredding the Parham hiring and has logged on at various times to spout non-sensical BS. .....
Click to expand...

If you are serious about this, then I find a little loss of credibility.

According to your own site, the guy named "reggieman"
has only posted four times in all the time that your board has saved posts, which go back to March. Here is the full tally of all his posts, see for yourself.
http://redbirdfan.com/forum/search.php?search_author=reggieman&sid=12e915384d9eba656090043d6fdbc677

And he has only posted one lone time on the subject of Parham, and here is an exact cut and paste of his sole Parham-related post:

Just wanted you to see the Bradley perspective
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=53202#53202

but this hire was predicted 2 months ago
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=48318#48318
Click to expand...

So you equate this with "shredding"?
And please point out the non-sensical entries?

I dare say there's nothing there by reggie that is any more non-sensical or along the line of shredding that what you and many ISU fans post here on BradleyFans, don't you think?
 
DUBulldog said:
Da Coach said:
By the way, I count 7 black players on the 2006-2007 Evansville roster, Merfeld's last team. That's the same or more than on last year's Drake team, Indiana State team, and UNI team. So where is the evidence of this?
Click to expand...

Hate to nit-pick, but Drake had 9 black players on the team last season.
Click to expand...

Alright, I did the best I could considering the roster doesn't have pictures. But here is the Drake roster from 2006-2007. The African-Americans I count from my recollection of seeing them play are Ajay Calvin, Nick Grant, Leonard Houston, Aliou Keita, Al Stewart, Armel Traore dit Nignan, and Josh Young.

That was the 7 I counted before. I see you conted Bryant, and I didn't because he doesn't even appear on Drake's own website's roster. But then he would be 8, and Eaddy would be 9. I didn't remember seeing him play.
By the way, Calvin, Grant, Keita, Stewart, and Traore dit Nignan were all seniors. So 5 of the 7 I listed will be gone next season.

I count at least 2 African Americans in the 2007 recruiting class (Parker and Faines). But that still leaves fewer next year?--
Ryan Daniels, Wendell Faines, John Michael Hall, Josh Parker, Alex White.
 
Da Coach said:
By the way, Calvin, Grant, Keita, Stewart, and Traore dit Nignan were all seniors. So 5 of the 7 I listed will be gone next season.
Click to expand...

Really? I hadn't realized that :lol: (is there a sarcastic smiley?).

Bryant was just recently taken off the roster on the Drake website....doesn't really change the fact that he was on the team last season.

I count at least 2 African Americans in the 2007 recruiting class (Parker and Faines). But that still leaves fewer next year?--
Click to expand...

You're right, but I don't see where that has any relevance whatsoever to the discussion. FWIW, there will be 7 African-American players on Drake's team next season, barring any unforeseen roster changes....and Drake fans are still holding out hope for a roster change or two. :D

I am impressed if you remember seeing Traore dit Nignan play, as a lot of Drake fans don't....I'm being 100% serious here. He scored 1 point in his entire career and only played in a handful of games.
 
tornado said:
DannyCooksey said:
They were more of a pre-emptive strike against this guy called Reggieman that posts on there from time to time. He was shredding the Parham hiring and has logged on at various times to spout non-sensical BS. .....
Click to expand...

If you are serious about this, then I find a little loss of credibility.

According to your own site, the guy named "reggieman"
has only posted four times in all the time that your board has saved posts, which go back to March. Here is the full tally of all his posts, see for yourself.
http://redbirdfan.com/forum/search.php?search_author=reggieman&sid=12e915384d9eba656090043d6fdbc677

And he has only posted one lone time on the subject of Parham, and here is an exact cut and paste of his sole Parham-related post:

Just wanted you to see the Bradley perspective
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=53202#53202

but this hire was predicted 2 months ago
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=48318#48318
Click to expand...

So you equate this with "shredding"?
And please point out the non-sensical entries?

I dare say there's nothing there by reggie that is any more non-sensical or along the line of shredding that what you and many ISU fans post here on BradleyFans, don't you think?
Click to expand...

a little touchy aren't we? You act like you know this Reggieman. :lol: Pretty weird for a Bradley guy from Bradleyfans to come to the defense of a poster on RBF that uses the name of the Redbird mascot. :D

I could have sworn during the viewing of that thread, Reggieman had 30-40 total posts and 1-2 on that thread. In any case, the reason I brought it up was valid. Regardless of how many posts Reggieman has or what it's contents were, the posts on RBF regarding the Merfeld hiring were strictly tongue in cheek and mostly in response (as a joke) to the attention the Parham hiring received on this board. that's all i was saying.
 
Just for the sake of Kirk Wessler, here is a list of NCAA D-I college teams that perennially and repeatedly have fewer African American players than the average and fewer than Evansville:

Duke, Utah, BYU, Montana, Northwestern, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, in fact the entire Ivy League, Iowa, Wisconsin, Penn State, Northern Iowa, Creighton, Marist, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Iona, Citadel, Maine, Canisius, Army (geez are these guys racist, too?), and more.

Are they all racist?

Would you elaborate on just who constitutes "longtime MVC insiders" who "privately have expressed concern that the perennial shortage of African-American players on the Aces roster may be by institutional design"?

I suspect none of the long time MVC insiders I know would agree with that statement.
 
Danny, then the fact that you seem to be so paranoid about a guy who posts about once a month and hardly says a thing about any topic, seem to hint a bit of paranoia, like maybe fearful of the bogeyman?

All I did was to point you right to the very record itself and I see not ONE objectionable thing the guy has ever said, so why the paranoia?

I don't see BradleyFans posters getting up in arms about posters who might be from another team.
 
tornado said:
Danny, then the fact that you seem to be so paranoid about a guy who posts about once a month and hardly says a thing about any topic, seem to hint a bit of paranoia, like maybe fearful of the bogeyman?

All I did was to point you right to the very record itself and I see not ONE objectionable thing the guy has ever said, so why the paranoia?

I don't see BradleyFans posters getting up in arms about posters who might be from another team.
Click to expand...

You never cease to make me laugh. Thanks reggieman :lol:
 
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