News on Bradley, the rest of the Valley, and also the rest of the entire universe!!

Bradley plays at Missouri State tonight -- GO Braves!!!! We need a big win!!



Three games were played in the Valley last night showing how balanced the teams in the MVC have all become...

First -- Missouri State has lost 2 of their last three and BU faces them tonight in Springfield, MO...so I am hopeful we'll come home with our third MVC victory.

But -- co-Valley leader Wichita State lost last night at HOME to SIU!
David Kyles was 1-8 from the floor, and Wichita shot only 20% from 3-pt range as a team compared to the 46% they shot against us!
Carlton Fay had a nice game with 21 pts.
Bocot played 3 minutes and was scoreless, Diamond Taylor started and played 35 minutes and was scoreless, and the trio of Cleveland, Teague, and Long all missed with suspensions.

UNI lost their 2nd in a row at Evansville, 70-62.
UNI shot poorly but then so did Evansville's Colt Ryan who had only 9 pts.
Evansville's subs came through with 39 points!

Drake beat Creighton with the trio of Creighton big men, McDermott, Lawson, & Echenique, combining for only 22 points, a dozen points below what they've been averaging.
Creighton was also olny 4-22 from 3-pt range.


So with just four games left in the Valley season, six teams are within four games of the lead in the conference!
One of them is Evansville -- and this has to be the first time since the 90's that the Aces still have a shot at winning the Valley this late in the season.
the last time Evansville was in position to win more than 8 games and finish at or above .500 was in 2000-2001 when they finished 6th in the MVC at 9-9, and the last time they had a better than .500 record was when they won the Valley regular season race in 1998-1999 going 13-5 buit losing the Valley Tournament to Creighton.
Three Valley teams went to the NCAA Tournament that season, with Evansville losing a first round game to Kansas but Missouri State - the 3nd place finisher in the Valley - beating both Wisconsin & Tennessee to make it to the Sweet Sixteen (Steve Alford).


If Bradley wins out, the Braves could conceivably finish as high as 5th in the Valley standings, but all the teams ahead of Bradley would have to lose a bunch, and both Indiana State and Creighton would have lose all their remaining conference games (they do not play each other any more so it's still a possibility).


In the Valley scoring race....
With at least 6 games remaining for all MVC teams (4-5 regular season conference games, plus the BracketBuster, plus at least one game in the MVC Tournament)...Andrew Warren is close to a LOCK to win the MVC scoring title.

Even if AW doesn't even play again...the nearest guy to him in the race for scoring leader, Kyle Weems, is 69 points behind and then Colt Ryan is 109 points behind in the race....so yes, they could catch up if Andrew played BUT went scoreless the rest of the way....something that's just not going to happen.
If Andrew didn't play, then his average would stay at 19.3 ppg, and those other guys would have to score between 24 and 33 points every game the rest of the way to catch Andrew -- something that would be next to impossible.

Here's a surprise....the guy that's 2nd in scoring in conference games only is Carlton Fay -- not Weems or Ryan.
Ryan surprisingly is having a fairly BAD conference season averaging only 12.9 ppg, almost 4.5 ppg less than what he scored in the non-conference part of the season!
I guess it means Valley schools have now seen enough tape on Colt and know how to defend him better,.
Oddly it may actually be making Evansville a better team to have other guys get involved in the offense, as Evansville is 8-6 in Valley play despite the far smaller contributions from their leader, Ryan.


Dave Reynolds said this in his column this morning...
"Braves briefs: The 90-day deconditioning period for
Taylor Brown’s heart is up this week. Les said the
impending medical testing scheduled to determine
Brown’s heart condition hasn’t yet been finalized."

I don't know all the facts and of course the testing isn't "done" since it involves even monitoring TB's heart as he begins workouts and conditioning even after he's cleared to do so.....so testing will go on for several more weeks....

BUT -- anyone who was at the October 15 event, Hoopla on the Hilltop, saw Taylor walking thru the layup drills and not participating in anything, the dunk contest nor any drills of any kind. It was obvious his "de-conditioning" period was already fully in effect.
And even by the time the official announcement came on 11/12/10, it was already well known that Taylor had been "shut down" several weeks already, he had been held out of exhibitions, had been seen by doctors, had even been for a consultation at Mayo Clinic, and that the de-conditioning period was already well in effect.
That means his "3 months" might have been done a few weeks ago!



Niles Notre Dame's Quinton Chievous now getting Big Ten attention and recruiting...
ESPN lists Penn State, Iowa, and Nebraska...

Even after Creighton had a terrible loss at Drake, and their fans are in a hysterical meltdown, the Omaha World-Herald has 8 new articles about the team and the game, not including blogs and box scores, etc.
http://omaha.com/section/bluejays

And amazingly, none of them are negative, none attack the coach or players, or call for a coaching change. I wish we could have such good coverage.

From the Omaha World Herald-
http://omaha.com/section/BLUEJAYS01

There are also several blog entires about the Creighton team that are actually more complete and detailed than most fans would even care to read. They are great. This is in addition to all the regular coverage (8 different articles today) by their beat writer Steve Pivovar.



One Creighton fan has a somewhat negative opinion on one of the Bradleyhoops.com pieces by Dave Reynolds -- posted on their board...
http://is.gd/M20iLv


Here's a Shocker fan who repeatedly makes the argument that not only is their Ben smith in the middle of the discussion for Newcomer of the Year -- but that he should win it outright as he is the best newcomer in the Valley since "the early 90's"
This is so funny................

Ben Smith has had a couple nice games but here's the guy's stats...
6.9 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 1.3 apg ..plays more minutes than Garrett Stutz

I guess the guy just has no concept of how good of a season Doug McDermott, Mamadou Seck or others are having, or even as bad as Walt Lemon is doing - his stats are better than this guy...
http://is.gd/3isILB

Did you see where Jimmer Fredette is NOT going on his Mormon Mission..
http://is.gd/6gQDws


Lots of MVC coaching rumors popping up...summarized here...
http://is.gd/mZYR6n



I just wanted to give some props to the girls teams from both Midwest Central and Peoria Christian....
They are playing for the IVC Regional Title Thursday....

This is a very tough (2A) Regional with IVC, Eureka, and Fieldcrest who have been perennially great teams, and who were expected to better the teams seeded below them...
and yet PCS knocked off Fieldcrest who they've had a tough time beating in past seasons, and Midwest Central pulled off TWO consecutive upsets on consecutive nights, Monday beating IVC and then last night knocked off TOP seeded Eureka -- who many were saying could be a state-caliber team this season.

Midwest Central, if they win, are the hosts of the Sectional and will then play on their home court with a chance to head to state...
PCS is looking for their 1st Regional title win after falling a couple years ago to IVC in the Regional Championship.



Tennessee got hammered last night on ESPN by Kentucky -- Tennessee's head coach Bruce Pearl used injuries and poor play as the excuse.

ACC Last place Wake Forest seems to have found the scapegoat for all their problems..
http://is.gd/Qiq84x



Purdue beat Indiana and one of the broadcasters was Dan Dakich -- who called the game from a Hoosier cheerleader standpoint. It got kinda sickening after a while...
Indiana's Jordan Hulls is at times a tough player and helps keep IU in most games, but here are a few interesting comments about him from the Purdue players..
In an audio interview on the Purdue Rivals site, Boilermaker Kelsey Barlow says this about the Hoosiers' Hull...
"..Hulls isn't mentally tough and is a little kid that thinks he's hard."

At least Purdue fans didn't rush the court after their won over Indiana like the Hoosier fans would have done...

Perhaps the biggest story and mystery about this Purdue/Indiana game was that all time Indiana great Kent Benson was sitting in the exclusive seats right behind the PURDUE bench wearing a Purdue jacket...this really stumps and enrages Hoosier fans!!
http://is.gd/6JCaQ6
http://is.gd/0TxSRh

What I don't get is all this drooling that some people, message board posters, and announcers are doing over Indiana and the job Tom Crean is doing...
remember - he has an entire roster of 3-Star and 4-Star players, he's had top recruiting classes, Indiana has always enjoyed tremendous fans support & crowds and home court advantage, and STILL they have only won THREE conference games (all at home) and may not do any better by the end of the season....
Hey, they won FOUR conference games last year and were supposed to be BETTER this year -- and the BIG TEN has proven itself to be far weaker than anyone expected...so is THREE conference wins by Tom Crean really evidence of doing anything??


One of the recruits Crean locked in on early for 2011..
was Austin Etherington....
probably at the time he locked in on Etherington - he thought that might be the best he can do...
But in the meantime he's now landing 5-star kids like Cody Zeller, Ferrell, Perea...
and even tho Etherington was long ago rated as high as 4-star -- everyone in the US now knows this kid is mid-major caliber at best...
Rivals has rightfully dropped the kid back to 3-Star
http://is.gd/UnU3tx

But-- read about how over the weekend, his team, Hamilton Heights, played an obscure opponent Maconaquah...and Etherington struggled mightily...
missing all 10 of his 3-pointers...and his team lost 73-67...and now has a 2-game losing streak...
"Austin Etherington (Hamilton Heights): Hamilton
Heights fell to Maconaquah, 73-66, on Feb. 4. No
official stats were reported, but did receive a report
that Etherington shot just 3-of-15 from the field.
(Update: Finished with 15 points according to
commenter LDIU.)"

"..missed all 10 of his three-pointers in 73-67 loss
at Maconaquah on Friday night."

Etherington gets only 15-16 points a game -- kind of amazingly low for a BCS/Big Ten caliber SHOOTING GUARD recruit on a team playing fairly weak and small school opponents!!
Hamilton Heights is 4A in Indiana and they lost to Tipton (2A) last week --
http://is.gd/rOJtV5

There's even a report that Etherington is a troublemaker and starts fights on his OWN TEAM!!! Good luck TC - more of Devan Dumes and Jamarcus Ellis!
http://is.gd/bT6N69

....and almost everyone who has seen Etherington think he's at best a redshirt candidate...
http://is.gd/YfT91b

There's already a little sentiment that Crean ought to find a way to Jank Etherington and use the scholarship to bring in another big man -- as the combination of Pritchard/Elston/Bawa/Jobe/Michel simply haven't gotten it done and surely they don't think Cody Zeller is going to help that much immediately -- as neither of his brothers (Luke at Notre Dame & Tyler at UNC) did a danged thing their first couple years.


Meanwhile -- I think a lot of people missed on Justin Gant...out of Terre Haute, Indiana. He's been regularly putting up games like 25 points - 15 rebs
His team just lost to powerful Warren Central 61-58 and Davis had 22, Walter Offutt had 15 but Gant had 25 on 9-11..


Ex-BU recruit Leon Powell continues to put up big numbers for SEMO-
http://is.gd/3GwqDv


Nice story on John Shurna
http://is.gd/3FXvWP


Here's something I bet nobody knew...
Illinois' Bill Cole ranks #1 nationally in offensive rating..
...you have to scroll down a bit to "All Players"...on the Pomeroy rankings of individual player performance stats.....
#1 Bill Cole Illinois 6-9 215 Sr 141.6 (11.7)



Lastly -- after yesterday's blog entry on the center of the universe...a well known, well published physics professor pointed out to me that I had actually not even mentioned the single STRONGEST argument that places earth right at the exact center of the universe!

He rightfully noted that if you check "quantized red shift" and see that there's yet another well known fact among scientists, astronomers, and physicists that argue strongly against the generally held theories of how the universe began and how it currently exists...
http://is.gd/xBxgtZ
http://is.gd/TiPz0z

In fact, unless you adopt a creation mindset -- there is currently NO WAY to reconcile the quantization of the red shift...that everything is moving uniformly away from us -- everything.....thus the "red shift" which is related to the velocity that things are moving away from us....is precisely the same for all object at the same distance..
this cannot be explained by any concept other than that we are sitting right in the middle of everything -- or that it was simply created that way!!!!
http://is.gd/GQTH7b

Yet even scientists who scoff a the idea of creation or at the idea of us being at the center of the universe...all have to agree that is what it looks like...
that there are concentric shells of matter and light that center on US -- as if we are in the exact center of the entire universe...even though this writer immediately scoffs at that prospect as "impossible"
http://is.gd/S7NVth