Some great lockeroom bulletin board material for Bradley & other Illinois teams

The very first of the fall College Basketball Preview editions is out...
and I will give a simple Valley-centric review of it....
The Sporting News 2011-2012 College Basketball Preview Edition can currently be found at Peoria's Barnes & Noble, but the cover sure won't boost sales any. I guess they figure the Illinois market might be swayed by a Big Ten cover - but some player from Iowa won't give their Central Illinois sales much of a boost.

They start with a lot of coverage of the best teams for 2011-2012 and they rank the preseason Top 25 -- no Valley teams included.
Here's their top ten...
1- UNC
2- Kentucky
3- Ohio State
4- UConn
5- Duke
6- Syracuse
7- Florida
8- Memphis
9- Baylor
10- Vanderbilt

In their preseason 1st Team All Americans - they list pretty much all players from the top 10 teams including Kentucky's Anthony Davis out of Chicago.

The 2nd Team All Americans include a couple Big Ten players John Shurna & Jordan Taylor.

3rd Team includes Creighton's Doug McDermott...a nice honor for the Creighton sophomore. But this is an indirect way of saying they don't think Missouri State's Kyle Weems is going to be the Valley POY.

In their picks for the NCAA Tourney - they do project the Valley getting two teams in.
Creighton is their pick to get the automatic bid but the Jays land just a #9 seed.
Also listed and getting a #10 seed are the Wichita State Shockers.

The only other conference besides the Valley that I looked much at was the Big Ten. They don't rate the Big Ten very highly and outside of Ohio State, the seem to suggest every other Big Ten team will struggle outside their conference.
Here's how the pick the Big Ten --- so I think a lot of fans are going to be unhappy - especially Illini, Michigan State, and Tubby Smith fans...

1- Ohio State
2- Wisconsin
3- Michigan
4- Purdue
5- Michigan State
6- Indiana
7- Northwestern
8- Minnesota
9- Illinois - Illini fans will have their bulletin board material as well
10- Iowa
11- Nebraska
12- Penn State

Among other schools in Illinois - WIU, NIU, etc...this preview doesn't appear to give any of them much of a chance this year.
Then as you will subsequently see, the three Valley teams that reside in Illinois are also lumped conspicuously all at the bottom of the league.
They don't pick any of the D-I Illinois schools to do diddley-squat this year -- so I sure hope they're wrong!


Now on to the Valley...

The MVC section was written by a guy named Tony Jiminez, a writer for the Topeka Capital-Journal. Maybe Tony wrote this piece back in April or maybe he doesn't know much about any team outside of his own state - but whatever - he makes many, many GLARING and ridiculous mistakes. Some of his errors simply have no explanation except that he didn't do any homework and simply went on what he remembered from his summer reading.

Anyway -- I won't pick apart every mistake the guy makes but I will list a few of the significant errors since maybe not knowing who got severely injured over the summer or who got hurt or suspended could be accepted.

Here's how he picks the Valley to finish.......

1- Creighton - he seems to think they've got the Valley going away

2- Wichita State - he really likes Toure Murry

3- Indiana State - (I expect the recent Lathan injury was subsequent to his press deadline)

4- UNI

5- Evansville - the writer kinda thinks they're going to be a scoring machine with Colt Ryan

6- Missouri State - glosses over that they lost 4 starters

7- Drake - seems to hint at chemistry issues

8- Illinois State - picks Nic Moore as best newcomer

9- Southern Illinois - says despite not returning anyone who can score, their defense and rebounding will win games

10- Bradley - basically says Geno has nothing to work with - an empty cupboard. I sure hope the BU players and staff cut this column out and paste or tack it up in the lockeroom and read it every day!


Yup - that's right, he calls Bradley at 10th place just a bit below ISU & SIU.
I sure hope he's way wrong, and I honestly think he will be since his reasoning is quite flawed by his inaccurate knowledge.
Given he's a Valley beat writer - he surely should know things like..

- Jalen Crawford is NOT the only incoming freshman that Bradley has

- Justin Clark will not be one of ISU's top returning players and potential starter. He left the team over 2 months ago

-saying UNI's Johnny Moran is one of the Valley's all time top career 3-pt shooters - he's a great kid but his career 3-pt pct. is 33% - below the national average of all players

- Taylor Brown is NOT really a 5th year senior - he's only been in college for four years, although his clock runs out this year


Anyway - back to the preview...
Their 1st Team All Valley - Doug McDermott (about whom roughly half of the entire MVC section is about), Toure Murry, Jake Odum, Kyle Weems, Antoine Young.
Can't argue, but I sure hope Dyricus has something to say about this.

They list a few other honors - but none mention a Bradley player. In reality - Taylor Brown is one of the top scoring and top rebounding players who is playing in the Valley this season, but the writer apparently thinks TB will have a completely lack-luster year as he barely mentions him.
They do rank ISU's Nic Moore as the Valley's top incoming freshman,
and SIU's Chris Lowery is the "Coach on the Hot Seat".

The teams picked at the top of the Valley get a bit more text in their sections - actually quite a bit.
The teams at the bottom get very little as is the case with Bradley...
But not knowing about Will Egolf's injury and saying things like this...

"Geno Ford was able to sign just one recruit, Jalen Crawford"
...means this writer simply does not know much about Bradley or know that Geno landed a FIVE man recruiting class and three of them WERE landed and SIGNED by Geno!

http://is.gd/vJ7x4z

All in all, it's about on par with most preseason publications -- spending an inordinate amount of ink on the top teams and very little of any benefit on everyone else. But - since it's the first one to hit the market - I at least had to read it...but, ahem, I enjoyed the ambiance and some hot chocolate at Barnes & Noble while reading it but I saved the $8 and did not buy the magazine.