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A Jury of One's Peers - How Did Bradley Do Under Coach Les?

When I was compiling the mid-major peer results, an interesting fact emerged regarding the MVC during JL's tenure. Creighton is the only private school in the upper division of the MVC performance over the last nine years. No other private school in the MVC comes close.
  • Should Bradley look to join a weaker conference? Being top dog in a weaker conference has worked well for several teams that have done much better than Bradley during this time period.
  • I think it is time for Bradley to seriously assess leaving the MVC. The notion of a mid-west private school conference being formed that would want Bradley is a nice dream. A more probable, but still remote, possibility would be for Bradley to join the A10 and try to be part of a Midwest division within that conference. Try to team up with Creighton, Drake, or Butler to add two teams to the A10 and turn it into a 16 team conference.
With regard to the future, is it our destiny to be lumped with Illinois-Chicago, Drake, Illinois St. and St. Louis … which are teams with a similar W/L % to Bradley’s for the last nine years. I think we can do better than we have for the last nine years. We have a solid nucleus of players and what appears to be a solid incoming class. My parallel to this is when the Bulls fired Doug Collins and replaced him with Phil Jackson. Collins had done OK, but Bulls management realized that he was not the guy to coach Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant. Phil Jackson was hired and the rest is NBA history. If current Bradley players stay together and the recruits still come, then this team could make its mark next year as well as for 3-4 years to come. If there is a player exodus, then that is OK too. Almost all of these teams had coaching changes during this 9 year period and most of them came out of it OK after 1 or 2 years.
 
Da Coach said:
If we are going to blame every result on the coaching, then we also have to acknowledge that Jim Les' coaching was good enough to get Bradley to the Sweet 16 in 2006, which coincidentally was the last season not affected by serious injuries to key players.

I keep getting accused of not moving on, what's done is done....
But then why are we re-hashing the evaluation of Jim Les again?
Let's move on. I just wanted to remind people that there were fans who could see this mess looming. It just did not make sense firing Jim Les when he was getting TB and SM back healthy, and with perhaps his best recruits coming in that he's had yet. But then some were so desperate to get rid of the coach that they are happy with the prospect of being the worst team in the league for years to come.
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I agree. It made no sense to get rid of him now. That being said, it is done. We can stop trying to justify the firing, and we can also stop criticizing it.

Problem is, as more and more players ask for their release, the same emotions from both sides will bubble up. Anti-JL people will be frustrated so they will take it out on the players, pro-JL people will be frustrated so they will take it out on the admin. It's very predictable.
 
lake Camelot said:
I'd rather not, but if bunches of players leave then it may come to that. If we are getting some decent players and improving, I will get excited and look forward to the future. It could take a while depending on how much of our team has to be replaced. Or I suppose a new coach could still convince the players to stay and we still could have a good team.
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Well that's what will happen, and I think we had a team that was improving and would continue to improve greatly next year, to the point that they would be in contention at the very least.
 
Dallas Brave said:
If it had been my decision, I would have given JL another year.
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I saw that. I was just responding to your point that getting rid of Les would have been justifiable based on his 9 year record.

I agree that this team should have finished higher than tenth, and probably with about 3 or 4 more wins regardless of injuries. But even a close to .500 year would not have saved this season, save for maybe a game or two in the CBI/CIT. Either way this season was lost, but we would have made a big jump in the standings next year. Understood though where you are coming from DB. :)
 
Braveman said:
NCAA TOURNEY WINS LAST 9 YEARS

Western Ky
14-8
Xavier 13-8 Butler 10-5 Gonzaga
8-9 George Mason 4-2 Davidson 3-4
UWM
3-3
St. Joseph’s, 4-4 Siena, 3-4
Tulsa, 2-2

MVC
Creighton, 1-4
So. Ill., 5-6
No. Iowa, 2-5
Wichita St, 2-1
Missouri St, no appearances
Bradley, 2-1
Illinois St, 0-0
Drake, 0-1
Indiana St., 0-0
Evansville, 0-0
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Uhhh, where did Western Kentucky get 14 NCAA Tournament wins in 9 years? You got the right team listed here?
 
The more and more you think about it, the more unfair it does seem that this was the year Les went given the injury issue, which was significant. But I suspect what happened was that he had the same ultimatum I had for my own expectations for him:

Going into this year, I said, "No more excuses. No more excuse is valid this year like they were in other years. This is the last stand. No matter what happens, no matter how good or bad, Les has to show results this year or go. This is the year we have to finally evaluate without thinking about luck"

Of course, we get screwed by the injury bug harder than probably every team in the entire country. But I committed to the idea of no excuses no matter what this year, and it seems like the admins stuck with it too.
 
Well im sure the offers are pouring in for Les to coach another team since other schools know it was just injuries that kept him from greatness.
 
BraveGrad said:
Well im sure the offers are pouring in for Les to coach another team since other schools know it was just injuries that kept him from greatness.
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I think Paul Lusk, Rob Deter, Mark Few or Coach K would not have achieved greatness with this team this year!

Granted, I have said several times that we should have had at least 3 or 4 more wins even with the injuries. But how could you even think ANY coach could achieve greatness with a team that had their two all-conference players out almost the entire season?!

Sorry, greatness would not have happened this year, no matter who the coach.
 
Bravesfan said:
I think Paul Lusk, Rob Deter, Mark Few or Coach K would not have achieved greatness with this team this year!

Granted, I have said several times that we should have had at least 3 or 4 more wins even with the injuries. But how could you even think ANY coach could achieve greatness with a team that had their two all-conference players out almost the entire season?!

Sorry, greatness would not have happened this year, no matter who the coach.
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I'm talking the 9 year resume, one look and the BCS will come calling. They are smart enough to see what Glasser and Cross couldnt.
 
TheAsianSensation said:
The more and more you think about it, the more unfair it does seem that this was the year Les went given the injury issue, which was significant. But I suspect what happened was that he had the same ultimatum I had for my own expectations for him:

Going into this year, I said, "No more excuses. No more excuse is valid this year like they were in other years. This is the last stand. No matter what happens, no matter how good or bad, Les has to show results this year or go. This is the year we have to finally evaluate without thinking about luck"

Of course, we get screwed by the injury bug harder than probably every team in the entire country. But I committed to the idea of no excuses no matter what this year, and it seems like the admins stuck with it too.
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It seems like they did. But like I said in the post above, no coach would have achieved greatness with this team with their top two all-conference players out.
 
Buesch N Chips said:
That's pretty easy to say, now.
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I said after the Duke game that I didn't think we were a play-in team.

And I didn't say I wouldn't have still been pro-change, I just said I would have been on board with the rationale. Had we retained him after this debacle I wouldn't have been on board.

Not sure what you're trying to stir up here.
 
BradleyBrave said:
I said after the Duke game that I didn't think we were a play-in team.

And I didn't say I wouldn't have still been pro-change, I just said I would have been on board with the rationale. Had we retained him after this debacle I wouldn't have been on board.

Not sure what you're trying to stir up here.
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Nothing. Nevermind. I'm sick of debating the same thing over and over. Hopefully the new hire will put us all on the same page.
 
Bravesfan said:
It seems like they did. But like I said in the post above, no coach would have achieved greatness with this team with their top two all-conference players out.
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That's the thing - they decided the first 8 years were so marginal, that Les had to overachieve in '09. The argument being he lost the benefit of the doubt in the body of work in the first 8 years.
 
SFP said:
My biggest pet peeve on this site is when a new member starts their first post in the negative.

I could spin it either way and most of us have. Using an analytical approach it seems they pulled the plug a bit early. If they gave the JL experiment one more year and it did not produce they would have had a much better reception. The dismissal was done on pure speculation and emotion. When dealing with humans I prefer analytics over emotion as the reasonable choice. I deal with huge egos on a daily basis and I have seen them make disastrous decisions based on emotions. Will this be a disaster? Time will tell but the first step to prevent a disaster is a great contingency plan and besides the search service it seems one was not in place.
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All great points SFP!
 
BraveGrad said:
SFP said:
My biggest pet peeve on this site is when a new member starts their first post in the negative. QUOTE]

Feel free to block me
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People won't block you if you make rational arguments on why you feel it was time for Les to go. But when you come on here with your first few posts mocking people who felt Les was fired a year too early, then you don't start off on the right foot.

If you have a concrete argument supporting why the Les firing was appropriate at this time, then feel free to post it. But don't tick off half the people here by making smug comments that have already been posted way too many times here!
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TheAsianSensation said:
That's the thing - they decided the first 8 years were so marginal, that Les had to overachieve in '09. The argument being he lost the benefit of the doubt in the body of work in the first 8 years.
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Then they should have fired him after last year. But you know, whatever. What's done is done. Now they HAVE to make the correct hire or else things will only get much worse around here before they get better. Hopefully we will hear something soon.
 
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