News around the Valley

The biggest news in my opinion is this.............
http://twitter.com/CoachJimLes/status/4486990018

Every BU player is now fully cleared for any activity...no present health problems....
even Will and Andrew are essentially 100% and ready to go, so can we have a few days off from the Chicken Little's??



The next biggest news is the unfortunate injury to Bobby Hill of ISU. The details are well documented........
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=141189#post141189

but how will this affect their depth?? Some were figuring that ISU would use Bobby Hill as a starter....
They have 3 guys who are almost certainly to be starters - Eldridge, Dinma, Phillips - but the rest of the rotation is up for grabs as there are really just way too many untested players to know who will fill those spots yet.

First....for Bobby Hill, in regards to eligibility, this is his 4th year and next year will be his 5th year. So he may only have one year of eligibility remaining...but could get a 6th year by special appeal/waiver from NCAA..but very few cases qualify.

The other guys who'll play the guard and wing spots are.... Clark, Ekey, Upshaw, Carmichael, Lewis, Kellen, A. Hill, Johnson, Rubin, and possibly Jeremy Robinson (also coming off knee surgery), plus a few walk ons.


.... five of them are freshmen (Clark, Ekey, Upshaw, Johnson, Carmichael) who haven't ever played a minute of D1 ball, one is a D2 juco (Lewis) who hasn't played a minute of D1 ball, and two (Thornton, Robinson) are sophomores, neither of whom played even 5 minutes a game last year, and both averaged less than 1 ppg. Rubin is really a backup PG, so -- their total depth at the spot Bobby Hill plays amounts to a list of players who have never started a game at ISU before, their total minutes played is 172 minutes (120 for Thornton, 50 for J-Rob), and their cumulative (D-I) scoring average for all 7 players is 1.6 ppg (0.8 ppg for both Thornton, and Robinson), and 2.0 rpg.

If I had to guess who will be the other two ISU starters, I think they'll come from this list....
SG/wing - Austin Hill, Johnson, Lewis, Clark
PG/combo guard - Rubin, TJ?

--First...that'll be a small lineup as only Dinma looks to be a starter over 6-3....unless they want to use Carmichael or Robinson, and I can't see it...

--then it also means that their 4th through 8-9th roster/rotation spots, which last season accounted for 3400 of their total 7000 minutes played....will be manned by very inexperienced players.

So.... are the Redbirds going to man 1/2 of their minutes played with "D-I virgins" as one local reporter calls them?
In the season that BU got lambasted for having too many D-I virgins, the Braves went with 4 D-I "virgins (David Collins, Theron Wilson, Rashad Austin, Tyrone Cole-Scott).
One (Wilson) was a superb producer, while he AND the other three accounted for WELL UNDER 2000 total playing minutes, a drastically smaller amount of playing minutes than ISU is going to have to fill this season with their D-I virgins...and yet Bradley still got ripped in the press for the poor recruiting that led to using so many D-I virgins and inexperienced players who were wanting and expecting decent laying time!!
Will we see similar rips this season aimed at the Redbirds? Time will tell.


(oddly, when the PJ Star writer lambasted the Braves for using too many D-I virgins, the minutes totalled less than 2000 played by the newbies, yet this past season with Dodie, CRob, Norris, Taylor Brown, and Eddren all logging big minutes, our D-I virgins & jucos totalled almost 4000 minutes, yet we didn't hear a thing about too many virgins in 2008-2009. ??)
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Here are some recruiting blurbs from one guy who really knows a lot about the recruiting scene....tropicalshox has posted on BradleyFans and is very active on Shockernet.
http://twitter.com/tropicalshox/status/4493730113
http://twitter.com/tropicalshox/status/4354779478
http://twitter.com/tropicalshox/status/4393570177
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BU soccer player, Grant Campbell named Bradley Country Financial Scholar-Athlete of the Week.
http://www.bradleybraves.com//ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=3400&ATCLID=204804361
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Creighton announces more info about their TV schedule
http://www.gocreighton.com//ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=1000&ATCLID=204804272



Donivine Stewart mention...I hear that BU is still OK with Stewart..
http://www.illinihq.com/blogs/recruiting_wrap/2009/09/29/donivine_stewart_planning_visits


YahooSports preseason issue is out, I will try to get to a copy and give a wrap on it... ;)
Valleytalk still down...days and days on end...
Last time this happened, the guy who runs it from a distance said it was hacked...hardly a surprise when they allow such horrid and hateful rants there from infantile posters whose only joy seems to be attacking fans from other teams and even fans from their own claimed team.
I never go there, nothing useful, but it's dying the same death as one other wasteland of a message board that's being kept afloat by one or two flamers.