With excuses growing thin a small but vocal clan tries hauling out a haggard old alibi

I saw a claim that the current Bradley situation and indeed the changeover of coaches from Jim Les to Geno Ford was ...."a situation" that "was not remarkable in any way"


I respectfully disagree and will present evidence to support that the Jim Les situation was really quite unique...
Just show me any other coaching changeover where such a vocal clan of fans that team with the grudge-holding media to continue well into the 4th year attacking the past coach?

Here are the numerous unique factors to the BU situation...

-Les came under attack and was criticized even before he was a finalist for the job
-the local media made absolutely NO effort to hide their displeasure with JL's selection and stirred up an uproar with attack pieces for the entire first year or more than JL was here...
(remember the Phil Theobald attack that he never explained that Les had surrounded himself with people who prefer the expedient way to the ethical way)
-the editor and columnist of the PJ Star (Kirk Wessler) has publicly stated he soured on Jim Les in year two, became convinced he had to go and began beating the drum to get JL fired...all before JL had been here for his 3rd season!
-then Jim Les was fired after his first and only losing season over a SIX YEAR STRETCH - something that is extremely rare and only a handful of such examples of a coach being "fired for losing" when he actually had that much success.
-lastly - even though all players who played for JL are long gone, we're in our 4th year under GF, and even the JL-haters guaranteed we'd be winning and competing for championships by now - those same people have hypocritically backtracked and in order to cover their own embarrassment have begun dragging out the old "blame it all on Jim Les" and "this terrible slide actually started 10-12 years ago" fairy-tale.

Has any Bradley team ever been this bad?

Bradley has now lost horribly to Augustana, Texas-Arlington, and a very, very bad Robert Morris team that just got shellacked twice by 30 points or more before coming here to Peoria to pick up a seemingly easy win.

I notice even the message board of JL-haters are admitting their precious admin & AD have made a series of inexcusable and stupendous mistakes and bonehead moves.
Sadly they still think people don't notice how bad this stinking mess is or that the fans are gonna keep coming because they are trying so hard!

Changes need to made right from the top - from the Board on down or Bradley will be DIII so fast it'll happen before the PJ Star sees it coming - which wouldn't surprise anyone since they sure never saw this fiasco coming and were hooting and hollering just a week ago in the HOOPS section how tough and how good this team is.

Glasser, Cross, the coaching staff, and even the entire Board of Trustees must go...every Bradley grad and every fan I have talked to says the same thing- not giving a single cent of their money to those crooks again.

BU fans will be glad to see 2014 go...

Lots were optimistically looking forward to 2014 - those who wanted all the housecleanings claimed when all the new coaches got their own players - we'd be competing for championships...

OK - we're here now.....how has 2014 turned out for Bradley's team sports.....?
(XC did well but even the other individual sports of golf, tennis, track - were disasters)

BUT - let's just check the team sports - the sports where game coaching matters - the sports that people actually come to see and come to cheer Bradley on...the sports where we are paying big contracts to hire those coaches that are doing this to Bradley...

In calendar year 2014, here are the records - all games/matches included:

Men's basketball: 7-14, & 7-11 in conference
Women's basketball: 6-17, & 5-13 in conference
Baseball: 24-27, & 5-16 in conference
Softball: 27-32, & 15-12 in conference
Volleyball: 1-25,  &1-15 in conference
Soccer: 10-11-1, & 1-5 in conference

TOTAL - all team sports records combined for 2014...
75-126-1, and 34-72 in conference...woeful......really, really woeful....


All told - in 2014, Bradley won only 37% of their contests overall, and only 32% of their games in the MVC.
And yet there are still clueless fans and some media people who claim we are headed in the right direction!
I doubt you can find a single year where Bradley's team sports did so badly across the board - no wonder the attendance had crashed to only half of what it once was - and the number of donors, Scholarship Society members, and just people who care or who are interested - have all literally plummeted to only a small fraction of what once was...

The amazingly stupid long term contracts given to the very people, in the Athletic Dept. and coaching staffs - that have brought BU athletics to this low point are the anchor that is killing BU sports.

As recently as 2008 & 2009 Bradley basketball was winning 20 games, heading to the post-season, and commonly drawing crowds over 10,000 - even several sellouts.
The dive occurred after that despite the attempt by some to try to blame it on those who successfully raised $170 million back in the early & mid-2000's for all the improved facilities, and who helped build donations and the BSS to an enviable record level that has not and likely now will not ever be surpassed.

Read for yourself:
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=294762#post294762

Please stop looking for someone else, even fans - to blame - put the blame where it belongs - and right this sinking ship before we are indeed DIII.

Here's why we're losing to DIII's and 300RPI directional schools

Regardless of poor play and poor coaching...a lot of it is four years of bad recruiting and terribble recruiting MISTAKES.

Hard to blame all this on someone else....

-Donivine Stewart was brought in as PG then sent packing

-Devon Hodges was brought in to help in the paint then never played & was sent packing

-Jalen Crawford was thought to be a great scorer but sent packing

-Shayok was versatile and a great scorer but sent packing

-Barnes brought in as a PF then changed to a SF/wing player - now embarrassing legal issues

-Anthony Fields brought in to play point guard - but is a flop

-Tucker signed then lost when he was kicked out of QEA Academy

-Swopshire was our next great scorer then sent packing

-Chris Blake was literally the best of the big men Geno brought in over his first FOUR years and was a starter but Geno made two horrible mistakes on Chris Blake - first he was a terrible DI player but didn't matter anyway as he wasn't eligible beyond a year and Geno did not know that!  How can we NOT know that?

-Zecevic was recruited sight-unseen for his scoring ability - then sent packing when he couldn't score

-Macari Brooks was recruited & offered then the scholarship had to be withdrawn when Brooks failed to qualify - again, kinda confusing that we didn't know that...

-Kendahl Amerson was recruited as a scorer and yet GF didn't know 'til two months after he was here that he was ineligible - how does that happen?  This is like the 3-4th time this kind of recruiting blunder occurred

-GF offered two dozen kids with the current open scholarship for fall 2014 - but couldn't get even one kid to bite - so we totally struck out - now back to cleaning house in the spring & reloading with whatever's left over...

-Grier was a fairly ineffective shooter his whole first season

-Ka'Darryl Bell was recruited as a point guard but it took a couple years for Geno to realize he can't play point guard - we now see complaining because we are forced to play the guy we recruited as a point guard AT POINT GUARD!

-Walt Lemon was the best shooting guard Geno has had yet he played him out of position at point guard

-the rest have been at best marginally effective and time will tell - but .....

We still lack the SAME basic three pieces that we have desperately needed since 2011...

we have NO solid point guard, no reliable 3-point shooter, and no effective low post player who can score and play some defense!

So much for the lame arguments that if we just wait long enough for the current staff to get their own players, we'd be competing for championships.  Funny how the only player to give us any spirited effort last Friday was Nate Wells - the only guy the current staff cannot claim full credit for bringing in here.

Still holding out hope - but more and more hoping for the major changes that are necessary before the arena is completely empty.

About as bad as it's ever been

Great - they solved the busy parking lot problem by driving all the fans away!!!

Basically this admin came in 6-7 years ago and chose to listen to a few whiney fans who are the squeaky wheel but who never donated a penny to the school, and some don't even have season tickets.
In pulling the knee-jerk reaction, responding to clueless fans, and cleaning house in every sport except soccer - then bringing in all new coaching staffs - many of whom never had winning seasons before - what the heck did they expect?

With basketball - the 1st clue was that after interviewing a dozen candidates, they couldn't even find one that wanted the job - even for double their prior salaries - so they were so crazed to get someone - anyone, they were even willing to run roughshod over the contract terms at Kent State - and cost themselves & Geno another $1.4 million buyout penalty.

This has been a series of almost laughable clueless moves - all the while cheered on by those fans who were intoxicated with the hope of running the last coach & AD out of town. Some held grudges because they were canned by the prior admin & some just had a bug up their **.
Well, congrats - you have destroyed a once proud basketball program - that will now take a minimum of half a decade and $3-4 million more to clean house again and get new blood in here..

Long college careers...

Bradley has definitely been associated with a couple of the longest college careers in history..

-first - we've had TWO 6th year guys recently - Sam Singh & Will Egolf

-then we were Daniel West's first school that he chose back in 2008 when he graduated from high school in Michigan, and now seven years later - he's STILL playing for Texas A&M Commerce - which just knocked off Texas Tech in an exhibition last night
By season's end he will have played over a 7-year college career - much of it at juco & DII.

- but the winner is former BU signee Sean Harris...
he graduated high school in 2007 - this is now his 8th year "of college" - although 2 years were a mission and one was just dilly-dallying & preparing for his mission.
...so how'd get 8 years, two of which were at Yuba?


And as discussed elsewhere - Bradley does indeed have a pretty bad record of the way we treat our head basketball coaches...

Bradley's record going back 40 years has been unfortunate, but they just have NOT stood behind their coaches...
With a track record like this - ya gotta wonder if the job looks as good to candidates as it should...

Joe Stowell still wanted to coach when the program was essentially torn out of his hands...and it happened again a couple years back - and even if both cases were justified, they could have been done in a better manner.

Versace, of course, had committed a couple of incredibly minor discretions - but he wouldn't kiss-*** to the NCAA bullies and wouldn't cooperate - so despite zero evidence they claimed he was not honest - but again our admin chose NOT to stand by him so he told them to take their job & shove it - and has done quite nicely ever since. I agree with Chico - this was a situation where we could have pulled together, stood by DV and weathered the issues, and who knows...

Albeck was canned pretty unceremoniously and has never - and likely will never be back

Molinari firing might have been the harshest. Everyone knew he had a couple great recruiting classes in a row, and when he met with Broski was assured he'd get at least another year to see how he'd do with the solid young group.
Less than a week later - he read in the newspaper that the admin had bowed to the pressure from Phil Theobald & others - it was a hard way for him to find out.
He has also done quite nicely since then...and despite all the bad teams he's coached since then and made better - you don't see many 25 point blowouts!

JL, of course, was thrown down the garbage disposal on a Sunday morning after his only losing season in the prior SIX - only to read about it on a Chicago website a couple hours later.

Speaking of programs that need turned around...

Not sure what the goal really is at BU...
they keep saying it is to compete regularly for championships at the DI level...
but it looks a whole lot more like it is just to put on a happy face..

For 70 years - since WWII - the goal in Athletics at Bradley has been to compete at the highest level and compete to play with the best and beat the best.
This was what we did in the late 40's, the 50's, the 60's, even with the limited recruiting budgets of the 70's, then we actually were among the ranked and the best in the 80's, and at times in the 90's and even as recently as 2006-2008...
We were playing with the legendary programs - Kansas, Pitt, and beating them - and getting our team on NATIONAL TV and Sports Illustrated...

This all seemed to come to a screeching halt somewhere around 2008-2010 when it became obvious that our admin wanted JL gone and forced changes were made in our Athletic & coaching staffs
(Ken Kavanagh was forced out, then Chuck Buescher, Eric Buescher, Alvin Brooks, then Jim Les were all forced out - then new hires were brought in for every sport except soccer)
..so they could engineer what they wanted - 

Well, at some point - now 7 years into the JG era & 5 years into the Mike Cross era - (recall, the last five years that coincide with the first five years of the Mike Cross era have been the worse 5-year span in Bradley basketball history)
It's time someone asks - are we better off as they promised? Or have the changes been complete failures?
Just sayin'...don't blame the messenger - most of the messengers are just trying to throw 'em a life line...

Tom Crean - entire program out of control again

Fact - Kelvin Sampson was fired by Indiana in February of 2008.
Tom Crean was hired right at the beginning of April 2008, and all the major player issues there at Indiana were just starting and continued largely into the first several months of the Tom Crean era...

In fact - one of the harshest critics now is Dan Dakich - but guess who was in 100% FULL control of the IU program as acting head coach when the majority of those disastrous issues were erupting - yup - it was Dan Dakich. Dakich also has harbored a grudge ever since as he thought he should have had a shot at the head coaching position.

So after Bassett & Ellis were booted in 2008 at the request of Crean - all the rest of those guys who were run out - were the exclusive doings of Crean - so he knew what he was getting into and was being paid handsomely to do it - so don't blame everyone else.

So Crean is no stranger to multiple player drug, alcohol, and arrest issues.  Add to that - a few of his early recruits were troubled kids as well (Devan Dumes) - 
Read more here- 

http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2010/12/debunking-myths-againindiana-beaten.html

Now, after Tom Crean finally nabbed a few great recruits (Zeller, Oladipo..) and had a a couple Sweet Sixteen runs - now he's got some big problems...
Over just the last 6 months or so at least four players have alcohol related arrests and other issues.

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2014/11/03/doyel-crean-failing-these-hoosiers-on-and-off-court/18439637/

A big hunk of IU fans are already gearing up for the inevitable - that Crean may be on the way out..
In fact - a whole lot of people had him on the HOT SEAT even before all these latest player issues.
Problem is, that it may take $12 to even as high as $15 million to buy out his remaining contract.
http://www.btpowerhouse.com/2014/6/30/5826622/tom-crean-indiana-hoosiers-basketball-hot-seat-fire