Looking forward to the competition

Things are pretty slow now that the Community events are over, AAU ball is over, and the season's still a couple months away -- and thus traffic on this blog is slowed down a bit. But we'll try to get it going by talking about the upcoming games.

I will add a few bits of info on each of Bradley's 2011-2012 opponents......

The first game is on Sunday, November 13 against UMKC (University of Missouri - Kansas City). This is still 91 days away........
The UMKC Kangaroos are in the Summit League - same as Coach Molinari's WIU Leathernecks.
The Summit was a rather weak conference, finishing 21st out of 31 conferences in RPI, and last year UMKC was 9-9 (16-14 overall with one non-D-I win) and in 6th place with an RPI of 212 and SOS of 280.
Their best win - and only win over any team whose RPI was better than 183) was an 85-77 victory at home over IUPUI (RPI 115).
Their best non-conference win was against Utah Valley (RPI 249) and their best road win was at South Dakota State (RPI 183)
EIGHT of their 15 wins were against teams with RPI over 300 (340, 306, 328, 345, 342, 336, 342, 336), and as you can see, SIX wins were gimmes - against teams whose RPI was inside the TEN worst RPI's in the NATION!!
Their only game against an MVC game was a 71-52 drubbing they took at Wichita.

UMKC is currently in Italy on a foreign exhibition tour through August 20. Their first game was supposed to be yesterday but it was postponed and moved to a later date.
So they have yet to play a game in Italy but are scheduled to play four games in four different cities, Bologna, Venice, Florence, and Rome.
However -- because of their tour -- they will have had a couple dozen extra practices than Bradley will have had when they meet in November.
Also - by the time they play Bradley on 11/13, UMKC will also have already had ONE regular season game two nights earlier against D-II Northwest Missouri State - in an odd 3PM start time so they can leave Friday night and not have to practice Saturday on a travel date to Peoria for the Sunday game.

One interesting thing about UMKC is that they had always played their home games at a far larger downtown arena and then last year they made a BOLD move and moved all their home games to their MUCH smaller, on-campus arena, Swinney Recreation Center, which holds only around 1400 and YET this move was hailed unanimously as a GREAT success as it brought larger attendances and more students!!

Here's their tiny Swinney Center that only seats about 1400 packed tightly.
http://image.cdnl3.xosnetwork.com/pics/400/KZ/KZXOXQGVGNZXIDN.20081116023646.JPG


The Kangaroo roster includes six returners and their main loss from last year is Jay Couisnard - 17.9 ppg - who was a transfer from Evansville. They also lost their other two best players Spencer Johnson & Bakari Lewis.

Reggie Chamberlain - 6-0 senior shooting guard, D-I transfer who averaged 11.6 ppg, 2.5 rpg in 2010-2011. Reggie started his college career at Seward Co. CC, then went to WICHITA STATE in 2008-2009, where he played in every game except one but only averaged 12 minutes per game and only 3 ppg - scoring mostly in garbage time.

Dustin Dibble - 6-4 senior SG from Michigan, part time starter averaging only 2.7 ppg, 1.0 rpg. Dustin has a great uncle who played on the NFL Detroit Lions.

Michael Gholston - 6-0 senior guard who averaged only 2.7 ppg and 0.7 apg.

Trinity Hall - 6-7 sophomore forward, Kansas City native, who averaged 7.7 ppg, 3.4 rpg.

Bernard Kamwa - 6-8 senior forward, Cameroon native who is already 23 years old. Played at four different high schools, and two different junior colleges before verballing to Cal State-Fullerton then reneging and coming to UMKC last year. He averaged just 3.0 ppg and 4.0 rpg despite being a full time starter when he was healthy.
One more thing -- he is just a career 37% free throw shooter -- quite possibly the worst in D-I last year (16-43).

Trevor Mason - little used 5-10 senior guard - 0.7 ppg.


And three returning redshirt players:

Kirk Korver - the youngest of the four Korver brothers - missed all of last season due to a foot injury.
In his one season as a freshman in 2009-2010, he played in 30 games and averaged 4.6 ppg, shooting 38.6% on 3-pointers.
He is brother to Kyle (Creighton), Klayton (Drake), and Kaleb (Creighton) - who all played in the MVC.
His mother Laine also was a good basketball player, as she once scored 74 points in a single game in high school.

Fred Chatmon - 6-9 sophomore F/C from Cleveland, didn't play in 2010-2011 but averaged 2.5 ppg, 1.5 rpg in 2009-2010.

Nate Rogers - 6-1 redshirt sophomore who played sparingly his freshman year at DePaul in 2009-2010 (2ppg) then transferred and sat out last year at UMKC.
Nate went to St. Joseph's HS and was a teammate of Demetri McCamey & Evan Turner.

And five newcomers:
Trevor Franklin - 6-6 wing from Kansas City
Jordan Payton - 6-5 juco fwd from Gulf Coast CC
Brad Reid - 6-11 juco center originally from Australia
Thomas Staton - 6-6 juco wing from Independence CC
Estan Tyler - 6-1 guard from St. Paul, MN