Opinions on the Valley, Bruce Weber now trying to recruit another Sammy and steal another mid-major star, and 5-year assessments...

Here's one to ponder... the ISU beat writer has already declared and anointed ISU's Nic Moore as the MVC Freshman of the Year...

Here's his piece - titled...
"Moore headed for Valley award"

Then he says even though he hasn't even seen all the other freshmen in the Valley...
"Nic Moore's mother better clear some space on the family mantle for the MVC Freshman of the Year award.
...it is pretty clear Moore might be a unanimous winner."

http://www.pantagraph.com/blogs/redbirds/isu-basketball-moore-headed-for-valley-award/article_1e7542e6-3c92-11e1-b013-001871e3ce6c.html

Well - I can't say he won't - right now he probably is in the lead for the award but only a third of the Valley season has been played - a lot could still happen.
But seriously -- what this writer is really getting after isn't how overwhelmingly great Nic Moore is....but rather how shallow the Valley is this year with freshmen.

Compare to last year....the Freshman of the Year (Doug McDermott) also won the Newcomer of the Year and had awesome numbers!
Even a few of the runnerups from last year such as Jake Odum, Rayvonte Rice, etc...still had way better numbers last year than Moore has this year.

Currently Nic Moore is averaging almost 27 minutes per game out of desperate need the Redbirds have for anyone with point guard skills, and yet his averages pale in comparison to last year's winner...
Just 9 ppg, 3.7 apg (3.5 in conf. play), 40.5% FG shooting.

In fact - since this season is so weak with its freshman class and so strong with upperclassmen -- if you even tried to find an All-Freshman Team at this point you'd be hard pressed.
I can only find a handful of freshman playing in the Valley that have even logged noticable minutes...and as I am naming them I suspect many readers won't even recognize some of these names...

--UNI's Seth Tuttle & Deon Mitchell, SIU's Dantiel Daniels, Bradley's Shayok Shayok, Drake's Jeremy Jeffers..plus Moore, and that's about it!! And most of those guys also hardly deserve All-Conference recognition as frosh but they may back into it for lack of anyone else who's any stronger of a candidate.

Pretty weak field - so if Nic wins this year then congrats are due - but he's lucky his freshman season is 2011-2012 and not 2010-2011 or any other year!



Some will remember Jake Barnett - the top freshman from the Mac who wanted out and bartered his talents last year and settled for Saint Louis. Bradley would have loved to have him but he spurned BU and went to SLU. Wonder if he's happy - as he sat out a year and he's not even playing this year!! No more than 2 minutes even in some blowouts!! And even tho SLU was highly regarded they start the A-10 season 2-2 and look very vulnerable....
So right choice or wrong choice???



BU's Bryan Gaul selected in MLS draft - nice Job BG!
http://www.bradleybraves.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=205363915&DB_OEM_ID=3400



In athletics when a coach or someone has been in charge 4 or 5 years - then I guess it's fair to say it has been time enough to make a fair judgement on the guy's performance and progress.
Obviously Coach Ford's been here way less than a year so he deserves time before people can be judgemental (although some jerks have tried).

BUT - Isn't 4-5 years enough to make a call on how someone's doing on the job??
Surely you see there's people questioning the progress and performance of guys like UCLA's Ben Howland and SIU's Chris Lowery -- if they're doing way worse now than they were 4-5 years ago then it's time to say so, right??

Surely by the time anyone has been in place and in charge 4-5 years - there would be some demands to see progress or some accomplishments by year 4 and 5...makes sense!

These kinds of demands and pressures were also laid onto Jim Les but we all know by year 4 - Coach Les had accomplished plenty - leading Bradley to a Sweet Sixteen, plenty of headlines, a 1st round, lottery pick NBA player, and tremendous optimism that then landed Coach Les a huge contract extension!

But let's just glance at the progress four and a half to five years into a couple other tenures...

First - take a look at Eastern Kentucky...they're a mid-major in the Ohio Valley Conference.
In their current head basketball coach's first 4-5 years (he is now at yr-6) he's barely better than .500 - and that was taking over a really strong program when Travis Ford was hired away...
Last year they dropped to 15-16 and now they're 10-9...so at best I think you can say in the 4-5 years after that change was made - they've been mediocre at best...

Their Athletic Director - hired by their University President just before she departed to take the position at BU - has now been there going on 6 years and few of their sports programs have gotten any significant accomplishments in that span...
Their premier sports - football, men's basketball in particular - have foundered...

So let's compare to Bradley -- where Dr. David Broski stepped down in mid 2007 almost 5 years ago....
Some were pretty happy with Broski's performance - after all his selection of Coach Les took us further than Bradley had been in the NCAA in 60 years!

So -- remember -- Bradley had been to the NCAA, the Sweet 16, and had already had some major accomplishments in several other sports...including success in soccer for several years running!

BUT -- you'd better figure that now there's time to glance at how have we done in the 4-5 year span since?? Some will ask we better off? What, if any, sports are doing better now? Almost all of our sports have had coaching changes in the interval...but surely people can't say that 4 and a half to FIVE years just isn't enough time to judge!! You make the call -- I am a 100% positive Bradley fans so I am biased towards the POSITIVE but others might judge a bit differently.

Why judge some would ask but - if you can't have a fair and honest assessment after nearly FIVE years after a changeover - then that would make absolute hypocrites out of the people who demanded Jim Les' head after just 3 or 4 years...
So I ask -- you make the call - in the past 4 to 5 years, with all the changes, AD changes, massive Athletic Dept. changes, coaching changes, even huge sums expended to make the changes -- how far have we come?
We have great facilities...are the programs following along as well?
How much better are all the sports programs - surely we'd expect to see a quantum jump forward and there's some evidence to back it up....I think we see the beginning.

Right at this time five years ago we were still basking in a trip to the Sweet 16, we have players going pro, record attendances, talk of record boosts in the funding and revenue for athletics....so if we were doing that well five years ago - then it's time that the local papers do some fair coverage of how far we've come - or are we, like Eastern Kentucky, kinda stuck in the mud and still mediocre according to our local press? LMK...



Did you see - University of Illinois basketball (Sammy's team) now sits in FIRST PLACE in the Big Ten all by themselves!!
They play Penn State tomorrow and a win will keep them in 1st place.
http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/m-baskbl-standings.html

Speaking of Illinois did you see what Bruce Weber said about Sam Maniscalco??

He said he'd like to fill the open scholarship he now has from Crandall Head's departure - with another player just like Sam Maniscalco - a graduate student transfer from some other school - specifically from some "lesser" school or midmajor...

Here's his quote..
"Weber may take another transfer to fill scholarship spot
If Illinois basketball coach Bruce Weber wouldn’t have taken transfer Sam Maniscalco last spring, the former Bradley point guard likely would be somewhere else in the Big Ten Conference.

But Weber isn’t sure he likes the rule allowing players to transfer for a fifth year to attend graduate school without sitting out a season.

“If I was at a mid-major or a low-major, I wouldn’t like it at all,’’ he said Tuesday.

...“We’re just putting out feelers now, seeing what’s out there and what might become available,’’ he said. “We’re going to watch, wait and see what’s out there.’’
Weber doesn’t expect the rule to change, so it’s conceivable he would add another experienced fifth-year point guard next season. Like Wisconsin looking for another quarterback, the Illini might need help after Maniscalco leaves."
http://www.sj-r.com/sports/x713195756/Illini-Basketball-Weber-could-take-another-transfer

There it is....Weber saying that other Big Ten schools were also trying to lure Sam Maniscalco from Bradley - and that he was the successful one - and had he not been the successful one - then one of the other Big Ten schools would have been.

PLUS - he all but admits he's out there recruiting players off other schools' teams..
he says they're putting out feelers!! Seeing what's out there!!
He apparently now has such disdain for "mid-majors" that he sees them as just a source for rosters to pick over and go shopping from!!

Does anyone doubt he'll be giving DSE a call to see how close he might be to being able to get a degree by the end of summer?



Nice article on Nate Wells this morning - but I have a question -- why doesn't Nate dress and go through warmups at each game??
When AT and Jordan Prosser redshirted they dressed and went thru warmups - so did Cameron Sweatman and Saihou Jassey - even though they knew they were redshirting...so why doesn't Nate do it this year - it would give him more practice, more shooting, more drills, etc...
Anyone have an answer??



Lastly - I read where one of the local writers said that Walt Lemon's lob pass to Taylor Brown was a 50-foot lob pass...

OK let's dissect this one....
First the lob pass happened right in front of me so I can say with certainty that it did NOT come from the backcourt as some have said...Walt was on the fly, running, and released the pass a couple steps over half court so maybe 6-8 feet into the front court.
Even if it was from half court - the entire half court is only half of 94 feet and at least 5 feet of that distance is behind the front of the rim and four of those feet are actually behind the backboard....so a lob from half court would still have been only 42 feet or so...

BUT - since the toss came from well across the half court stripe I'd say a better estimate on the length of the lob for the dunk was maybe more in the 35 foot range...but if the local writers are going to exaggerate or tell mistruths then at least one kinda makes the Braves seem better not worse like those misstatements generally do!



I think we can declare the Occupy movement DOA -- belly up...
They had a rally in DC and only a few hundred showed up, they're running out of money and the only headlines they're getting are because they're beginning to get so violent and are throwing bombs...
yesterday they threw smoke bombs at the White House!!
Can you imagine the uproar had the Tea Party done that??
Whoa...

Also their Iowa rally last week had about 5 or 6 people that's all..
embarrassing........
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/the_complete_failure_and_unnoticed_success_of_occupy_iowa/singleton/