Wonder if he kept his word?

"I ran across this old post by a self-proclaimed expert who is wrong more often than he is right...Back on September 3, 2010 he stated this in response to a discussion about that season's Lindy's Preview issue:

"I believe the Braves will finish 3rd or 4th--but I understand where 5th comes from. 
I will give Lindy's $100 if Andrew Warren ends up First-Team All-MVC.
I would not be totally surprised to see his minutes decrease as the year goes on in the place of DSE in particular and, to some degree, Eastman. Andrew isn't exactly....tough..."

"...Sammy makes first-team."...
http://www.pjstarforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=81181&p=1092639#p1092639


Well, here are the results from the post-season MVC release-
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17940

http://www.mvc-sports.com/media/2010-11/mbasketball/news/2011%20All-Conference.pdf

Of course Andrew Warren did have a fine year and WAS 1st Team All Conference!
He also has gone on to a fine professional career, and is still going...
Sam Maniscalco, as we all know, didn't even play that season and never played again for Bradley after he redshirted.

So, pony up "tribecalledquest" - this time you've been caught - you gonna send the $100 to Lindy's?
Actually, I'd prefer you send it as a donation to the Braves Club or Bradley University general fund - it'll finally get your name on the donors list for the first time!

Bradley's freshman enrollment and a look back on some predictions

Here's the info on what underlies the biggest story about Bradley University in the past 2 or 3 decades.  Frankly it is astounding that the local newspaper has not touched this story - although they have alluded to much of the fallout from this.

As most know, the sharp decline in freshmen enrollment has been a major issue at Bradley, but there is some good news....it appears to be turning around.
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=24344

The BU Scout has an article detailing this. (and as noted, this story has not been given any fair or accurate coverage elsewhere)
http://www.bradleyscout.com/news/low-enrollment-discussed-plan-in-action/

Freshman enrollment usually averaged around 1,050-1,075...this has been the case going back years....
http://www.eduers.com/University/Illinois/Bradley_University.html

Some years it was even slightly more...and enrollment was still pretty stable on the high end of that range at 1,080 in fall of 2013.
http://wglt.org/wireready/news/2014/08/02537_Bradley_065332.shtml

Even Dr. Glasser herself stated that and was aware by April of 2014 that enrollment was going to be down in fall of 2014.

Indeed - freshman enrollment took a huge hit in fall of 2014, dropping to 940 - way more of a drop than anticipated.
Then freshman enrollment dropped a little more this fall to 927, but that was less than anticipated and shows that the new moves by the people who REPLACED Dr. Glasser's administration are stemming the tide of decline.
Remember - Dr. Glasser was in place until May 31, 2015 so even this year's further slight drop in enrollment would have been due to her policies.

Administration, especially Dr. Glasser tried blaming national trends and the PJS bought that line and never even questioned it- but as one can easily see, that just is NOT the whole answer-
as many colleges are NOT seeing the same decline....most MVC schools are seeing enrollment increases.
https://www2.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=4456
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=298168&#post298168

And of course the schools that now have our past personnel - UC-Davis & FGCU - are seeing enormous surges in enrollment!  Whoa!
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=306338#post306338

Dr. Liberty, Bradley's current Interim President says the problem is ...
"The decreased enrollment can be attributed to Bradley’s inability to adjust old marketing strategies.."

..the university has been slow to use technology ..“Younger people are all mobile and into social media..“We got out of tune with that.”

“The marketplace is changing, and we haven’t adapted well to that,” Liberty said.
However, Liberty said the declining enrollment trend would stop after this year ...there will be a steady increase.”"
http://www.bradleyscout.com/news/low-enrollment-discussed-plan-in-action/

So Dr. Liberty seems to be disagreeing sharply with Dr. Glasser and he believes it was old, outdated policies that Bradley was using under Dr. Glasser's administration that were the whole problem.
There also is a ton of evidence that excessive and irresponsible over-spending under Dr. Glasser - especially in Athletics - drove the University to the brink of a financial ctastrophe, which then made the enrollment drop way more of an immediate issue.
Then the fact that everyone else on campus was blamed, and faulty was asked to cut back given smaller budgets and even asked to take pay cuts - really kinda rankled a lot since Dr. Glasser was getting excessively overpaid for the lousy job she was doing!
http://peoriapublicradio.org/post/report-bu-president-tops-salary-scale#stream/0
http://www.cinewsnow.com/news/local/Bradley-president-tops-college-executive-compensation-list-285648691.html

Remember this - when the morale was bottoming out in all the academic departments-
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-remarkable-letter-from-bradley.html

Nope, Dr. Glasser's reign was solely and uniquely responsible for all of the mess.  Not just the drop in enrollment but the simultaneous financial crisis she caused with reckless spending to try to help her boy Geno win.  Someone has to tell it like it is since the PJS sure isn't going to - they still have their noses up where the sun don't shine.



BTW - check out these predictions made back on January 2, 2015-
Hmmm...pretty close on all of them
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2015/01/predictions-2015.html

Just some simple accounting for those who are interested...some opinions gathered from those who were there

Just had a couple interesting conversations with a former long-time member of the Bradley Board of Trustees.
So I thought I'd clear up a simple topic.  If you want to claim it's hearsay, then fine, but it is what it is and I am just relating what was said by others.

Some who are extremely uninformed, credit the departing BU President for bringing in millions of dollars.
But there's really only one person who actually makes that claim and now she's gone and exposed. The gullible and lap-dog PJStar often just parrots what they hear from her - in the end some of those falsehoods get repeated and even bought by uninformed, gullible fans.

First, of the $160 million raised in the past decade - almost all of it is attributable to the people who were in place BEFORE Dr. Glasser got to Peoria.
I have detailed this unequivocally before - the Markin gift, the Caterpillar pledge & gift, the Puterbaugh gift, etc....
Mostly all collected and in the bank long before those currently taking credit got here.

http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2015/08/for-record.html

But nobody talks about the HUGE loss of revenue that has HURT Bradley severely and it was all caused by personality clashes and directly attributable to just one person, Dr. Joanne Glasser.  But some who have left the Board know ...

Simply put - NUMEROUS, wealthy, generous members of the Board of Trustees, as well as other wealthy generous donors have bolted and withdrawn their pledges and gifts as a direct result of that one and only person who was driving BU Athletics and Bradley University itself in an UN-sustainable direction towards disaster - the disaster that the Board finally woke up and saw late last year and then they embarked on an UNPRECEDENTED and highly unique & unusual mass housecleaning from the President to the Vice President to many other administrators, the Athletic Director and highest profile coach & all his staff.

Anyway - the list of prominent Board of Trustee members who have resigned due to Dr. Glasser is astounding....
Hersey Hawkins, Harry Puterbaugh, Brian McGough, even Robert Turner - who was the PRESIDENT of the Board of Trustees and quit mid-term while he was also in the midst of a $10 MILLION donation that he was handing to Bradley - but isn't any more.
Also the McCord family has obviously drawn back support....
all told, those pledges and gifts that those MILLIONAIRES were going to give Bradley but didn't - are thought to total in excess of $20 million!!
Yup - Bradley could and would be at least $20 million on the plus side of the ledger had our President simply treated the most loyal, faithful, generous, and honored of Bradley alumni, Board members, and donors with any respect at all.

People like Hersey Hawkins, Robert Turner, etc....they don't come along very often but now bridges are burned by an egomaniac who had to be the center of attention and ran off anyone else with a higher profile if they didn't cow-tow.
Take it for what it's worth....we're lucky the University has survived this mess.  Thanks only to the great fans who saw the problems, caller her out and wrote letters, emails, and openly pleaded (in editorials, high profile message boards) and personally spoke to the Board and finally got their ear away from the others like Shaheen who led some down the wrong, destructive path.
Those fans finally got the ear of the right Board members who previously were listening to and duped by the but sniffing PJS crowd and squeaky wheel fans who never give a damn cent to Bradley University.
Someone asked where are all those fans who cheered on Dr. Glasser's bad moves and who hated Jim Les so much....they sure seem to have disappeared in a hurry along with all those other fans whose seats are empty for the Geno-coached games.
....and the answer is clear - just go find Geno & Glasser and then check a few inches south......they probably still have their noses stuck in a crack.

We're still deep in a hole and aren't out yet - but at least we have the lead anchor off our necks and have the right people leading us out of the hole.

Expect this to continue...

For years to come - the massive failures of the Glasser/Cross/Ford era will be blamed by the PJStar on others from the distant past.
It has been the constant effort of the PJS guys to try to shore up and promote everything over the past 4-5 years as great and everything else connected with Jim Les or Ken Kavanagh as the reason for any & all failures.

Recall- as recently as 2010, Bradley had sellouts & multiple crowds of 10,000-11,000, we were just coming off four consecutive 21-22 win seasons, post-season appearances, and a generally upbeat fanbase.  But we all know the PJStar guys still lusted for Wayne McClain and hated Jim Les.  They attacked him endlessly and tried continuously to get him fired.
Kirk Wessler actually admits that as far back as 2004, he began a policy of endless criticism to get Les fired...
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=825114917#post825114917

Now more of that dishonest effort to blame the filings of the Glasser/Cross era on others...

Just about everyone knows the TRUTH - that the Itoo Supper was held every single year without fail, all the way from the beginning of the Ken Kavanagh era thru the end and Ken had absolutely NOTHING to do with it being "phased out".
And yet when they wrote about Dr. Chris Reynolds, they lied & claimed it was Ken Kavanagh that "phased out" the popular Itoo Spaghetti Supper.

But it was NEVER phased out by Kavanagh - it was held every single year that he was AD/
It was even held one more time after Ken was gone - as planned by Ken in 2009 even though Ken had left Bradley and Virnette House-Browning was acting as AD.

But here's where we catch them in their lie -- the editor of the Sports department at PJStar actually said this just a few weeks before this column ran...
Here's a statement directly from Kirk Wessler stating that he KNEW it was Mike Cross that phased out & discontinued the Itoo Supper - plus Wessler even describes how OBVIOUSLY Cross also knew that this was a very popular event, and that a lot of fans still wanted it even years after it was discontinued, and that Cross was defiant and still said in effect...
"screw all of you - that doesn't matter, we will not have the Itoo event"...

It is a statement posted in June of 2015 by Kirk Wessler talking about an encounter he had with Mike Cross in the fall of 2011....

Wessler says...

".... I don't think Mike Cross ever experienced
an ITOO supper, because the first year Geno Ford
was coach (fall of 2011), they staged several
"community" events - at Hickory Grove, at Five
Points, at the Avanti's Dome, etc. - and I did a
column re the missing spaghetti supper.

Cross was asking me all kinds of questions about it,
and while I was interviewing him, 
several people briefly interrupted us
at various junctures to request that the spaghetti
supper be reinstated."

http://www.pjstarforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=99688&p=1417533#p1417533

So they knew all along it was Cross who phased it out but they said otherwise anyway.

Some myths that were propagated for years now blown to smithereens

Myth Buster

Myth #1- Geno's teams would be much better when he finally gets all his own players. Reality: the talent level did not improve as time went on - it actually got worse as the Jim Les players left, and we did not gotten better. In year 4, BU was nowhere near ready to compete in the MVC, and Year 5 would have been an intolerable disaster since Geno had absolutely zero recruits and no interest from anyone in coming to play for him.

Myth #2- Walt Lemon was a selfish player and hurt the team. Bradley will be much better when he is gone. Reality: another myth busted. Some predicted over and over again that Walt would be greatly missed, and now we see he is. The team did not have any other reliable scorers, no toughness, no leadership (despite what the PJ Star kept fibbing about), and poor perimeter defense (see below). Walt provided all those things.

Myth #3- Geno is a good defensive coach. Reality: we gave up 86 points to Texas-Arlington and they had their way with us because of some of the worst defense, interior and perimeter, I have ever seen. There are gobs of other examples, no need to list.

Myth #4- Bradley will be better offensively under Geno. Bradley was at or near the bottom of the MVC in every offensive statistics for the last 4 years, and would have been again this year. We shot 37.5% against Augustana, and to prove it was no fluke, we shot 38.2% against UTA.

Myth #5- Bradley's inside game and big men will be improved. Sorry, this was also a delusion creted by Kirk Wessler. Josh Cunningham may have some promise, but he shot poorly and spent a ton of time roaming the 3-pt arc where he shot around 20%.  Xzavier Taylor was worse, Morgan and Shaw were non-existent.  Myth busted.

Myth #6- Bradley is much deeper- year after year the media tried to sell this, but with all the players suspended all the time, we barely had enough to compete and even when we did, nobody even gave a half effort.

Myth #7- This year's recruiting class is one of the best ever. Year after year, the media tried to sell this myth, too.  wonder how they'd have portrayed Geno's 2015 recruiting class that did not exist at all.

Myth #8- Mike Shaw will dominate in the MVC. Yup - Dave Reynolds actually said this - that he'd score 4 times out of every five times he touched the ball!!  Reality: there was a reason he never played at Illinois. Now we are seeing why. Shaw is a great guy but deep sub at best unless Wardle can get more out of him than Geno ever did.

Myth #9- Joanne Glasser is the greatest president in Bradley history. Yeah, right. Not even Mike Cross thinks this now.

Myth #10- Mike Cross is a good AD. Reality: not one single hire he’s made has produced a winning program since he’s been here. Bradley teams’ cumulative records since he was hired in January, 2010 is the worst in Bradley’s history.
And the 5-year span he was in place nearly destroyed 110 years of GREAT Bradley tradition.



Lastly - wonder what would have happened if Kirk Wessler wasn't out of town and had been at the local HS football game where on of the Bradley recruits got into a bit of trouble.
He'd have splashed in in the headlines for weeks with exaggerations and lies about choking, ligature marks, and kicking & screaming...


But even the teams picked last in preseason polls are winning - BU VB in particular - incredible what a change of leadership will do.