As most will recall - Bradley went through a long and complicated search process in 2002 to find a head coach. More than 70 candidates had applied and were considered, then after the field was narrowed, at least a dozen underwent early interviews.
Then a few withdrew - and finally four finalists were brought on to campus to be intensely interviewed by the search committee.
Those four were:
Brian Gregory
James Jones
Jim Les
Wayne McClain
In the intervening twelve seasons since that search process, each of those four have had multiple coaching jobs, except for James Jones who remains in the same position as he had in 2002, head coach at Yale.
Here are some simple stats & numbers on how each of those four 2002 finalists have some since 2002:
TOTAL Division I wins as a head coach:
Brian Gregory 215
James Jones 171
Jim Les 182
Wayne McClain 0
Total wins in conference:
Brian Gregory 86
James Jones 94
Jim Les 90
Wayne McClain 0
(James Jones is the only one with a conference winning pct. about .500)
Total post season wins:
Brian Gregory 8
James Jones 3 (all in CIT)
Jim Les 11
Wayne McClain 0
TOTAL NCAA wins
Brian Gregory 1
James Jones 0
Jim Les 2
Wayne McClain 0
none of the other candidates were were even in the top dozen of so in 2002 have done any better...
For comparison, in D-I, Geno Ford has 105 career wins, 51 career wins in conference, has 3 post-season wins, zero NCAA wins, and is also not above .500 in career conference record.
Highlighting James Jones - he is now entering his 16th year at Yale, he has never won their league either in the regular season or tourney, and he has never been to the NCAA.
However - he has finished 2nd, 3rd, or 4th fourteen years in a row in the Ivy League.
They are happy with him and obviously keeping him at Yale has been the RIGHT move...even though I am sure there are fans that are disgruntled and claim he's never won big nor made the NCAA.
I think we can see that a lot of mid-majors make bad moves by cleaning house every few years and starting over - only to never get back where they were.
And we also have fans who are still whining & pining over not hiring some other guy back in 2002!
Certainly some of Bradley fans' BEST memories came in the mid-90's (Molinari years) - and in the mid-2000's (Les years) and there's been absolutely zero good memories since.
No quality wins, and an inordinate amount of lopsided and embarrassing losses.
Just maybe those who stumped for coaching changes each of the past couple decades steered us wrong.
It's been like cutting our heads off to spite our faces. Going from bad to worse...
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