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.