Bradley Commits in the Brian Wardle era

 2015-16

Fall Commits:
None (Wardle wasn't hired until March 27, 2015)

Spring Commits:
April 18, 2015 Ronnie Suggs- transferred spring 2017 to Mizzou, now will be redshirt senior at SIU
April 19, 2015 Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye* - finished career with 1055 pts
April 20, 2015 Joel Okafor- left after one season and finished career at NAIA Indiana Wesleyan
April 23, 2015 Antoine Pittman- transferred spring 2019 to Lincoln College
May 1, 2015 Peter Hanley (committed as a walk-on but by his senior year was on scholarship)- graduated
May 4, 2015 Davante Cooper*- left after one season and transferred to juco then Washington State
May 11, 2015 Alex Foster*- sat out one year then left after 2nd season as grad transfer to Albany
May 12, 2015 Luuk van Bree* - finished career with 774 pts
May 17, 2015 Scottie James- left after one year and transferred to Liberty, now a redshirt senior
June 13, 2015 Callum Barker*- left after 2 seasons & transferred to NAIA Missouri Baptist
October 18, 2015 D'Angelo McBride*- left the team after just one season but remained at Bradley


2016-17
Fall Commits:
July 2, 2015 Koch Bar
July 14, 2015 Nate Kennell
November 29, 2015 Jayden Hodgson* - transferred after 2018-19 to Grand Valley State

Spring Commits:
February 7, 2016 Darrell Brown, Jr.*
April 18, 2016 Jerome Merritt- redshirted his only year at Bradley then transferred to juco
April 26, 2016 Lou Griffith- redshirted his only yr at Bradley then transferred to juco then to DII St. Thomas Aquinas
April 29, 2016 Jojo McGlaston*- left mid-year in his 2nd Bradley season


2017-18
Fall Commits:
August 16, 2016 Ryan Stipanovich- left after one season and transferred to Missouri
October 2, 2016 Elijah Childs*

Spring Commit:
March 27, 2017 Luqman Lundy - finished career at Bradley with 127 career points

2018-19
Fall (early) Commit:
- none

Spring Commits:
1/23/2018 Armon Brummett- transferring after freshman season to Danville Area Community College
4/17/2018 Chudier Bile- left & transferred to Northwestern State, redshirted & is RS junior in 2019-20
7/30/2017 Aristide Boya committed as a 2019 recruit while still a HS sophomore, recommitted as a 2018 recruit on
6/2/2018 Ja'Shon Henry

2019-20
Fall Commits:
9/17/2018 Stephan Gabriel
9/18/2018 Antonio Thomas
9/26/2018 JaMir Price
9/29/2018 Ville Tahvanainen*

2019-20
Spring Commits
1/20/2019 Rienk Mask
3/29/2019 Danya Kingsby - transfer from LSU- received immediate eligibility waiver from NCAA 6/19/2019
5/01/2019 Terry Nolan, Jr. - transfer from George Washington- will sit out 2019-20
5/03/2019 Kevin McAdoo* - transfer from Eastern Michigan- will sit out 2019-20
5/08/2019 Sean Houpt - PWO
June, 2018 Riley Burger - PWO

2020-21
Fall Commits
9/27/19 Darius Hannah
10/29/19 Connor Linke

2020-21 Spring Commits

4/3/20 Sean East (transferred after 1 season), 4/20/20 Jayson Kent (stayed just 2 season then transferred), 7/6/20 Connor Hickmen, 8/14/20 Thomas Hall (walk-on)

2021-22
Spring Commits- 4/14/21 Mikey Howell (grad transfer), 4/23/21 Terry Roberts (transferred after 1 season), 4/26/21 Max Ekono (transferred after 1 season), 5/4/21 Malevy Leons, 6/12/21 Zek Montgomery, 6/23/21 Sam Hennessy (walk-on), 6/23/21 Cade Hadtke (walk-on)

2022-23
Spring Commits- 3/30/22 James "Pop" Weathers, 4/19/22 Christian Davis, 4/23/22 Cody "Duke" Deen, 5/6/22 Goanar Bilyew, 5/12/22 Sulaiman Agiste (walk-on)

Mid-year Commit- 12/31/22 Ahmet Jonovic

2023-24
Fall commits (none)

Spring commits- 1/13/2023 Demarion Burch
4/14/2023 Almar Atlason
4/15/2023 Kyle Thomas
4/15/2023 Trey Pettigrew
4/20/2023 Emarion Ellis

Kirk Wessler fired by Peoria Journal Star?

Details are few but here's what's known...

Kirk Wessler has been working for the PJ Star since the Dick Lien era...

He was the current Sports Editor.

Within the past 24 hours, Kirk Wessler announced on his own personal Facebook page that Friday September 7 is his last day at the Peoria Journal Star (owned by Gatehouse Media).

Wessler admits it is sudden, surprising and not what he wanted - so draw your own conclusions.  One of his colleagues, Aaron Ferguson appears to have only found out about his colleague's leaving yesterday.
One of Kirk's colleagues who worked in Missouri tweeted that Gatehouse is an "awful newspaper chain" - https://twitter.com/ghank/status/1037070821909581825

Here's a couple clips from Kirk Wessler's statement:
""Friday will be my last day at the Journal Star.
I may have more to say in a few days, but right now, I’m a jumble of mixed emotions.
... the end is not quite what I imagined either.
...My last day as a full-time newspaper journalist will be the Friday after Labor Day 2018. This wasn’t by design. It’s just the way things worked out.
I wonder what comes next."
Kirk Wessler once explained in a post on the Journal Star forum, that he turned sour on Bradley Head Coach Jim Les within the first year that Les was hired.  He then began beating the drum to get Les run out as head coach...

One other comment was:
"I dropped a critical hammer on Les and his program"

..and then Wessler spent the next 7-8 years "hammering" on Jim Les, unfairly attacking at any point and failing to even recognize the quality of the program, the team and the successes.
Wessler called for Les' firing and became an advocate for the horrible moves by Joanne Glasser then the subsequent disastrous hirings that sunk Bradley to near-DIII levels for the better part of 8 years.
Wessler hasn't let up yet, as he still occasionally drags out erroneous arguments to try to attack Les or Ken Kavanagh.  It is his MO - to try to justify the horrid moves made under the Glasser regime, and shift blame for all the disasters - away from where it belongs - Glasser & Cross.

It is many fans' opinion that Kirk Wessler bears a large amount of the reponsibility for the destruction of the BU athletics programs in that era and the disaster that is only now beginning to show recovery and is still a long way from being fully recovered.  Wessler also attacked GOOD Bradley fans - the very ones who finally turned on him, turned on Glasser and forced the changes that are now bringing Bradley back.  Wessler belittled Bradley fans who did not want to play in the small girls' gym, who did not want to play opponents like Eureka College, and who did not want the kind of hires that caused the worse performances in almost every sport that Bradley Athletics has ever known.

Kirk will get his share of accolades.  When journalists give themselves awards, it really doesn't register much with me or anyone else.  Just patting themselves on the back...
99% of all news on Bradley basketball gets reported first and gets reported more accurately and better on BradleyFans.com than in the Journal Star.
Is it any wonder the Journal Star circulation and readership has plummeted!  Is it any wonder the paper has been sold off repeatedly and downsized again & again with layoffs frequently?

I personally cancelled my subscription to the PJ Star a year ago after subscribing for 40 years...and I am not alone, as I know many others who have cancelled after multiple huge rate hikes while the paper shrinks and fails to offer any decent coverage of Bradley basketball.  It's hard to figure what all those people do over there at the PJ Star when they don't cover Bradley, there's absolutely NO coverage of local high school sports - and then Kirk writes a dozen columns every time there's an obscure track meet!

Oh well - some newspapers are thriving but the old haggard ones who demand you have to keep reading but don't bother to give decent, fair coverage because they believe they are a monopoly and you have no choice....those papers are the ones on the way out.  Bye...

Peter Hanley becomes Bradley's 13th scholarship basketball player

On August 22, 2018 - at a surprise announcement - Senior forward Peter Hanley was awarded a full basketball scholarship!

Congratulations Peter!!  Bradley tuition and additional expenses totals around $50,000 - LINK

Peter's stats for his first 3 years:
37 games played, 10-28 overall (.357), 2-7 from 3-pt (.286), 3-5 on FTs (.600), 39 rebounds, 9 assists, 3 blocks, 5 steals..

for averages of:
0.7 ppg, 1.1 rpg, 0.24 apg, 0.1 bpg, 0.14 spg

Once a Brave, Always a Brave!! Go Braves and Go Peter!!

Interesting fact on ex-Bradley Brave Josh Cunningham

Josh Cunningham left Bradley in 2015 and in the three years that he's been at Dayton, he has struggled with injuries and played in only 42 games for an average of 13.1 ppg.

But an interesting fact is that his girlfriend is a future superstar in the WNBA.

"Here’s an interesting personal note on Cunningham entering his final year in college: his girlfriend is A’ja Wilson, who was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft earlier this year.
Wilson is averaging 20.0 points per game for the Las Vegas Aces and scored 18 points in the WNBA All-Star Game on Saturday. She played college basketball at South Carolina, helping lead the Gamecocks to a national title in 2017 and winning the national player of the year award as a senior in 2018.
Cunningham visited South Carolina when he in high school and looking at schools, and he said that’s where he met Wilson. Wilson shared a photo on Twitter last month of her wearing Cunningham’s Dayton jersey."
https://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/grant-dayton-summer-practices-been-good-six-weeks/h4fy6uldmTfUZVttLxU9yM/

2018-19 Missouri Valley Preseason Previews

The 2018-19 college basketball season really has begun with teams already playing preseason exhibition games, and multiple source are already predicting the MVC race.

Within the next couple weeks we will see the multiple publications coming out with their predictions as well - Athlon, Lindy's, etc...

But so far most of the previews coming out look about the same...

They all have either ISU or Loyola in the top spot, they all seem to have SIU, UNI and Bradley filling the 3-5 spots, and then the rest generally line up with the total rebuilds at Evansville, Drake and Missouri State bringing up the rear.

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=825140047&postcount=4

https://thesouthern.com/sports/college/salukimania/way-too-early-look-at-the---mvc-men/article_ded4b3ce-7416-5556-9fa3-555401c83800.html

https://www.courierpress.com/story/sports/college/evansville/2018/07/03/missouri-valley-conference-basketball-one-bid-again-early-favorite/753954002/

https://twitter.com/CollegeHoopNews/status/1021138108690157568

https://twitter.com/CBB_Central/status/1025909404833599488

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=825141111&postcount=26

So Bradley is pretty universally picked 4th.....time will tell.......

Bradley completes foreign exhibition tour undefeated

It was only two games but Bradley went 2-0 and played well. The highlights include excellent rebounding, including offensive rebounding, defense and the play of the newcomers.

In Friday's game against Apollo Amsterdam Select, Bradley won 74-48, and both Luuk van Bree and Ari Boya had stat lines of 15 points and 10 rebounds.  Freshman Boya went 7-9 and also blocked 6 shots.  Elijah Childs had another strong game with 11 pts, 7 rebounds, 4 steals.

Further accounts here - http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27742

If they can stay healthy, this team will be very fun to watch and should compete for the top of the Missouri Valley.

Happy Birthday Andrew Warren

https://bradleybraves.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=8183

New season begins - Bradley opens up 2018-19 with an exhibition win

Bradley men's basketball headed to London on July 29 to enjoy the sights and food and to play some pre-season exhibition basketball.

The first game was Tuesday July 31 - possibly the earliest they have ever played a preseason game.

Since there was next to zero coverage for Bradley in the preseason by the local media (altho Kurt Pegler & WMBD had some fine coverage) I will document the details of their games.
I was able to locate a link to a live audio stream and post it before the game so numerous Bradley fans were able to see the link, log on and listen to the play-by-play from the British announcers who generally cover the opponent, the Surrey Scorchers - a team in the BBL (top pro league in England).

The game topped off at 7:30pm local time and 1:30pm Peoria time.
Bradley took a very quick lead courtesy of sophomore Elijah Childs hitting a 3-pointer and driving layup.  Bradley never trailed after that, although it got closer later in the 2nd half.

One of the Scorchers players was Michael "Big Mike" Ochereobia who was initially recruited out of Canarias Academy by Jim Les but then ended up playing his Division I ball for Jim Molinari at Western Illinois University.
Bradley shot reasonably well and played excellent defense - rebounding very well on both the defensive & offensive ends.  Bradley took a 43-23 halftime lead.
Further details can be found here - http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27740

Many of Bradley's guys played very well. Newcomer freshman Ari Boya scored 5 pts and rebounded exceptionally well.  The Scorchers announcers were praising his play frequently.
Antoine Pittman played well both offensively (9 pts) and defensively.

Once Bradley hit about 50 points, the jet lag kicked in and they looked tired - allowing the Scorchers to outrun, outhustle and outplay the Braves and close the lead to just 2 points - largely by getting the benefit of a while lot of foul calls. (They went 18-22)

But Darrel Brown, Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye and Elijah Childs had an excellent 4th quarter & Ja"shon Henry had some nice plays - and Bradley held off a strong surge down the stretch by these seasoned professionals on their own home floor.
Bradley won the game 73-66.

The unofficial scoring totals as I have tallied were:
Elijah Childs 20 points on 9-14 and 9 rebounds
Antoine Pittman 9
Jayden Hodgson 7
DLO 10 plus 5 rebounds
Darrell Brown 7
Luuk van Bree 6
Ja'shon Henry 5
Ari Boya 4
Nate Kennell 3
Luqman Lundy 2
Brummett, Hanley did not score
Bradley outrebounded Surrey 52-30 and logged 25 offensive rebounds

I really enjoyed getting to listen to Bradley basketball in July!!  Great job Braves, and keep it up!  Hopefully if they get some coverage, ticket sales will surge.
Last year when Bradley was playing well down the stretch and battling for the upper half of the MVC (and going 13-2 at home!), the home attendances were in the 7,700-8,000 range!  Those kinds of crowds have not been seen with any regularity since the Jim Les era - and hopefully signals that the huge base of great, lifelong Bradley fans is ready to come back after the disaster of much of the past decade then resultant fallout from Joanne Glasser's horrific reign.

Here's more video & photos - http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27740&page=3

Bradley will now wrap up events in London & travel to Amsterdam to plat the Amsterdam Select on Friday August 3.  time for that game will be 8pm local, 2pm Central Time.

More info as it becomes available on that next game will be posted here-
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27742

GO Braves!!

I just saw someone griping about the schedule

So the schedule is not strong this year - but I think most people who are currently griping will be surprised as time goes on.
Many of the teams on our schedule will be better than last year, as they are teams that return 4 or 5 starters and are on the rise...with good players.

But if you wanna find a culprit for why Bradley still has the woes that we have...then stop looking at the people in charge now and look back to where the problems came from.
Bradley really hasn't been good and hasn't had the prowess to schedule well since Joanne Glasser took over!  Before that we were regularly in the 30-40 RPI range and had Top 100 Strength of Schedule every season!

Prior to 2010, there were quality non-conference wins every year. Jim Les actually had a wining record against Big East opponents, and beat DePaul several times, Illinois a couple times, along with Rutgers, Providence, VCU, Cincinnati, Virginia, Kansas, Pitt, etc.

But since 2010, the only top 100 RPI win in the non-conference was Central Michigan. ....
So, if you wanna gripe about Bradley and the schedule, you're preaching to the choir...

but it is ALL ON JOANNE GLASSER

Her campaign to make changes in Men's Basketball program began in 2007 as soon as she was hired...

within days after she was hired she became furious with Ken Kavanagh because of the way he handled the off-campus death of Danny Dahlquist (whose funeral happened literally on THE VERY DAY Glasser arrived to take her job on campus.)

then there were a couple more on campus incidents like this that Glasser felt damaged her image and she wasn't gonna take the fall for it and was going to hang it all on someone else.  We all know that's just the way she is.

http://www.rrstar.com/x1126215083

And then of course the incident with Theron Wilson, TCS and underage drinking...then the Daniel Ruffin issue...

..and Glasser was furious with Les & Kavanagh --
by spring 2008 she made her feelings known that she wanted them out and was going to do it any way possible.
She stomped all over Kavanagh's hiring effort for a new baseball coach and told him to take a hike she was going to hire her own pick.

She had Kavanagh by the balls since his contract at Bradleywas already coming up for renewal in 2009- so she simply told him to get lost, he would not be renewed past spring of 2009. She even tried to torpedo his chances of going to work elsewhere but he's done just fine, hasn't he?

But she couldn't do much with Jim Les since he was signed all the way thru 2014...
but she decided to torpedo his program and force losses upon him, and so she fired his assistants and hired her choices, she vetoed multiple recruits of his including his own son, and threw her full efforts into damaging him and his reputation just like she did to Kavanagh (even tho Ken landed just fine on his feet since nobody anywhere else in Division I had any respect for Glasser anyway)

Finally she engineered a few resignations on the Board of Trustees and bullshitted them enough by promising instant improvement under her direction...that she got the ok to fire Les and then she found that all of her top choices to hire as new head basketball coach didn't want to work for her.
She ended up hiring about the 14th best choice and ended up paying so much (especially with lawsuits counted) that Bradley's basketball program was now doomed.
Under Joanne, Cross & Geno she drove everything from the stability and winning of the program to the campus-wide finances, enrollment, fan support, attendance, etc... - deep into the abyss and near bankruptcy.

This is how we got where we are...we're halfway back but still a ways to go.
Blame who you want but facts are facts and most of the facts have never been reported by the PJStar - and instead they have run interference and covered for Glasser & Cross - calling everything they did great and lying about their horrible failures.

I have re-upped for another year because I believe this year will be a very good year.  Thanks you to the fans that finally got Glasser run out, to the Board that finally listened, and to Dr. Chris Reynolds, Brian Wardle and his staff.  Keep working hard!


BTW- just saw someone claiming that GEORGIA SOUTHERN's coach Mark Byington was under consideration back when Bradley hired Brian Wardle in 2015.
LOL- That is 100% pompously and ignorantly false.  There's never been a single mention anywhere by anyone of Byington as a candidate for head coach at Bradley but if you just use common sense, then look at where Byington was in the spring of 2015.  He was a brand new coach at an obscure program and had not established any track record of winning or recruiting and had zero ties to the midwest....  Who the heck would have hired him at that point least of all at a school like Bradley that's well above the level of a Georgia Southern.  LOL, just more stupidity and blowhard.

New post for the 2017-18 season

Bradley returns everyone for the 2017-18 season and should have a great shot at being one of the top teams in the MVC...

I have talked to fans who have seen some of the players or watched practice, and I am hearing good things...  The players mentioned as far as improvement and development - range from Donte as a senior to guys like Kennell, Brown, Jr., and Bar as sophomores, and the incoming freshmen.

The teams that were above Bradley in the Valley in 2016-17 have all lost a bundle...

Seems some are picking Loyola to be the top team but they lost their best player and team leader in Milton Doyle, plus a few other contributors and now have lost perhaps their two best incoming new players to injury.

ISU loses almost everyone but they still have some new talent.

Missouri State loses the least - just Dequon Miller and some bit pieces - but they return the player who likely will be preseason Player of the Year in Alize Johnson.

UNI always is in the hunt, but they were a surprisingly bad 14-16 and also lose their best player (Jeremy Morgan).

Some think SIU will be strong enough to compete for a top spot in the MVC but I think they lose an awful lot of firepower & team leadership in O'Brien, Rodriguez, & Vincent.  They also have a short bench with all their losses and bring back only 3 players who had much experience at all in Bol, Lloyd & Fletcher.

Drake, Evansville, Indiana State or Valparaiso all might surprise...time will tell.

Bradley will still be a young team this season with only 2 seniors....then 2018-19 should be a strong year where Bradley will field almost all very experienced players & lots of juniors & seniors.
Things are definitely looking up....the optimism is as good as it's been since the Jim Les era....even tho every season under Geno was hyped to hell by the PJS writers with glowing praise, talk of all time top recruiting classes & talent and strength at every position that hasn't been matched since the Mitchell Anderson/Thirdkill/Reese era....
(Seriously - Dave Reynolds & Kirk Wessler actually said those things, and instead what we got were horrible players like Chris Blake or Jermaine Morgan, ineligible/injured guys like Mike Shaw & Kendahl Amerson, or chronic police blotter guys like Warren Jones & Auston Barnes.)

Hopefully this season will go a long way to helping the great fans of Bradley forget the Joanne Glasser/Mike Cross/Geno Ford era of nightmarishly bad basketball but also corruption, spending wastefully and horrible treatments of the fine fan base.

Hard to imagine that just a few years ago - a tiny clueless segment of the Bradley fan base that had their noses up Joanne Glasser's butt praised her as the best President that Bradley had ever had.  OMG - could anyone have been more ignorant and clueless?  Most of those bozos have since realized their ignorance but amazingly a few still have never caught on to how bad she was for Bradley and DI athletics.

Another complete & total butchering of truth by Kirk Wessler

Kirk Wessler's article this morning rails on and on about how the BU-ISU rivalry isn't a rivalry any more...
and he tries to put the blame on Jim Les again by pointing to the JL era for when the rivalry died off....and then back to the 90's for the last time both teams were solid contenders at the same time (I guess to heap a little blame on Molinari, too)

Well, someone has to straighten him out and point out the facts.

The BU-ISU game was still a solid rivalry right up until just a few years ago...
2010-2011 - Jim Les' final year - BOTH BU-ISU games were 1-pt thrillers with near sellouts (the BU game was 10,600!)
2009-2010 - even the game over at ISU sold out at 10,200 - they've really never packed the place like that since!! The game HERE was a 1-point thriller again with 11,300 (only 100 short of a sellout!!)
2009-2009 - the BU-ISU game at Carver was one of the most exciting rivalry games in memory..BU held off the Redbirds despite a really great performance by Osiris Eldridge, [B]attendance was 11, 592 - the BIGGEST CROWD EVER at Carver
Arena!![/B] - ...the game over at Redbird Arena was also a SELLOUT that season
...and etc., etc...
..all the games in the Jim Les era had the UNDENIABLE feel of RIVALRY games...

I have no ideas where Kirk Wessler was during that era - he obviously was so consumed with his irrational hate for Coach Les and his desire to smear Bradley during that era and try to "beat the drum" to get Les fired (those are KW's own admitted words for how he felt from 2003 on.....)

So once again - we MUST correct a total rewrite of history -- the BU- ISU rivalry DID NOT DIE during the Jim Les era...
it is NOT Jim Molinari's fault, it is not Jim Les' fault, it is NOT Ken Kavanagh's fault...

The fault lies clearly and directly with the administration that took over in 2007-2008, then cleaned house, hired Mike Cross in 2009, then fired Jim Les & hired Geno Ford in 2011.
the numbers simple do not lie...this rivalry still has a pulse and it's still possible to revive it - but it was sent to its DEATH BED by Joanne Glasser, Mike Cross, Geno Ford and even Kirk Wessler himself - who got exactly what he cheered for and beat the drum for in that span of the latter half of the Jim Les era...
Kirk got EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED and now he sees it's a mess, it's undesirable, it's a disaster...and he's looking for someone else to blame.
Check the mirror and your locket that you wear with Joanne & Mike's picture in it.

More good news

Bradley basketball gets more and more honors..

Top Academic Honors in the MVC



And still - well into Coach Wardle's 2nd season - everything's looking up, no black eyes, no arrests, no issues of any kind!

Especially in light of the almost incessant arrests, DUI's etc at ISU -

ISU's Deontae Hawkins arrested for DUI
A history at ISU of almost constant serious legal problems & arrests


In fact - notice last May when I was talking about all the arrests they were having last seaosn I said
"I predict more of this.....since the atmosphere hasn't changed."

That was a pretty easy prediction to get right!




Bradley is doing just what the fans have wanted and what Joanne Glasser had never been able to deliver.  In fact, despite some of the off court issues under Glasser/Cross/Geno - still I do not recall Bradley EVER having a player with a DUI or an aggressive robbery, rape, or serious legal issue - certainly not in the past 2-3 dedades...while ISU is dealing not just with one constantly but multiple such arrests and suspensions on a regular basis.

Bradley is picked 8th this season - great chance to surprise everyone..
Go Braves!!

Just pointing out an enormous difference

We are now one year & two months into the Brian Wardle era.  
FOURTEEN months since Geno and most of his players left the building.

But in that fourteen months there has NOT been once single "off the court" incident whatsoever.
NO arrests.
NO DUI's.
NO suspensions.
NO discipline issues.
NO front page news stories about behavior, being benched, or lack of leadership.
NOTHING but good things, good behavior, and stories of hard work & good ethics.

Let's recap the issues from the past - and the change of course from the Geno era is incredible.

-back in the Molinari era there were a tiny smattering of behavior issues....an allegation of a issue with Kevin Clancy that was never prosecuted and isn't even on the record any more.
That was about it....the Molinari era was incredibly clean.

-then there were a couple issues - all minor during the Jim Les era - but the PJStar guys tried like hell to blow everything way out of proportion.
Again - a couple minor issues that went to deferral and were never prosecuted...
note that even the one the idiots point to as the big one...the Daniel Ruffin case...
that case is readily searchable in the Peoria County database and guess what...

Charges reduced...then...

02/04/2009			COURT SUPERVISION TERMINATED (Judicial Officer: Gilfillan, Paul P )
02/04/2009			CASE DISMISSED (Judicial Officer: Gilfillan, Paul P )

CASE DISMISSED - hmmmm...well, then I guess this is far less of a legal concern that the multiple DUI's that exist still on the record of some of the Jim Les critics - the ones who bitch all the time about the Les era and stick their noses and entire heads up the butts of Joanne Glasser & Mike Cross.

So the sum total of the Jim Les era amounts to a couple issues that were dismissed and a couple underage citations.  If that's "renegade" then wait 'til you see what came in the following era!!!

The Geno Ford era...started right off the bat with suspensions...

Geno was known for his lax discipline and shoddy practice ethic.  I have been to Geno Ford practices at Bradley and have also heard the exact same stuff from multiple people who have also seen his practices..and have even heard from people in the Athletic Department who saw it all for four years and knew his and his players' ethics were horrible.

Players showed up late routinely for practices, they were lazy, they griped, they talked back, the sometimes only responded to Geno getting in their faces and screaming at them.  They hudded along sidelines and chatted & giggled with each other during practices about parties, girls, and adolescent stuff. Then even after they were dismissed they walked lazily to the showers without even picking up their trash.

But that was just the behavior Geno condoned & tolerated.  There was plenty of crap off the court as well - signalled early on as I noted by suspensions at the very first exhibition in Geno's very first year.  Then multiple other games had kids suspended....many games had multiple kids suspended...some kids were suspended multiple times for multiple offenses (Swopshire, Barnes, Jones).....

In total, there were at least 14 of Geno's players who were suspended or arrested, and several on multiple occasions...

Geno's players surpassed the SUM TOTAL of all the suspensions during the Molinari PLUS Les era combined (20 full years of Bradley basketball under those two coaches) - in just his first TWO seasons at Bradley - and yet the arrests and behavior crap continued....

Barnes got arrested for domestic battery and his case was NOT deferred nor charges dropped - he was CONVICTED!

Then there were the arrests and national embarrassment that went with the arrests of Warren Jones & Ka'Darryl Bell at Big Al's..

but it didn't end there....

Even after the season ended kids still got into trouble...

Brian Wardle was hired and a couple of the remaining players were sent packing for issues that were never made public.

But here's a little more...the Geno Ford guys still got in trouble even after Geno was gone!!!

Xavier Taylor begged to stay at Bradley but his work ethic was horrible.  he was given chance after chance then even given a re-scheduled workout - but guess what, he didn't bother to show up and he was dismissed.

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=825120916#post825120916

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=309948#post309948

and we all know Warren Jones wanted to stay but he broke team rules over and over and was sent packing...

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25553

So...one by one the lack of discipline ended up haunting Geno and the entire program.  Why wasn't Mike Cross overseeing this - or Joanne Glasser?? - after all they had their noses in the program constantly.  Cross even bragged about how he even took notes during games so he could adequately assess the coach! (Although nobody ever saw him take notes when Geno was coaching - hmmm..)

Anyway - the responsibility for this terrible behavior really does rise to the top and it's part of why Cross & Glasser had to go first - then Geno.

But virtually every single Geno player had arrest and off-the-court issues - even several whose arrests were kept hush-hush and whose time spent in jail were never mentioned by Kirk Wessler & the PJS. (This is fact and can be demonstrated in the same Peoria arrest & jail database).

It's time to look forward - so that's the main reason for this summary - to point out that what was once COMMONPLACE under Geno - is now NON-EXISTENT under Coach Wardle.

No more arrests, no more issues......virtually all the Geno players have moved on & are gone along with Geno, staff, Cross, and Joanne....and PRESTO - problem solved...

Kirk Wessler simply doesn't have the guts to bring up the RENEGADE issue with regards to all the tremendous issues Geno had that dwarf the issues during the Les era when he used that term "renegade".  Now what will Kirk write about?  I guess he's become a Rivermen fan, but he writes a column about once every 3-4 weeks - pretty cushy job.

What the Hey? What is it with ISU players?

We have seen a long pattern of arrests and serious criminal issues with Illinois State basketball players.  There have been multiple DUI's & 2am bar fight arrests since the Porter Moser era including Levi Dyer, Brandon Sampay, Tyler Brown, Quintin Brewer and many, many more.  Plus the many drug arrests - Geoffrey Allen, Bryant Allen, etc...
and even serious criminal issues like Bobby Hill's rape of an underage child. LINK

But now it seems to be escalating again -
a quick search of the arrest and court database shows well over the team's roster with pending court cases, headlined by Quintin Brewer's multiple DUI's that were elevated to FELONY-level because he recklessly went out driving drunk while he had his charges deferred from the prior DUI and had a suspended license!  He & Javaka Thompson still have alcohol cases pending.
But now even the players who leave & transfer are in the headlines for serious criminal charges.
ISU's Reggie Lynch- now in Minnesota - arrested for criminal sexual assault.

Let's make sure to note that NOT ONE SINGLE ARREST - not even for a speeding ticket or jaywalking - has occurred among the Bradley players since Brian Wardle was hired.
There were a few issues under Geno Ford- most notably the Auston Barnes assault charges and the Egolf arrest for buying drugs from a street runner, but if you go back to the Jim Les era...
you actually find almost NOTHING as well.  That flies in the face of really ignorant people who play up the arrests and fall for the bullcrap that Kirk Wessler spewed about "renegade".
The very worst that those idiots can come up with to criticize Les are a couple underage citations and one charge against Daniel Ruffin when his drunken ex-girlfriend admittedly slipped and bruised her lip while trying to force her way, uninvited, into his apartment.
There was also another he-said/she-said argument with Jabbar Battle (who has been a model citizen ever since - unlike most of the ISU guys who go on and commit repeat offenses), Eddren McCain was in he car with a girl who had marijuana, and then the one real stretch- a claim that Taylor Brown had a feud with an ICC student over a girlfriend.
Oh, and you will find that in each of those cases, all the charges were NOT pursued as the players completed their deferral perfectly and again were model citizens.
That's it - hardly a thing going way back into the 90's as Molinai's kids virtually ALL stayed clean.

But getting back to the ISU players - the additional feature is that it all gets hidden & ignored and nobody ever gets disciplined.
Levi Dyer & Sampay would have never even come to light except that their DUI's were discussed on the message boards, they never missed a single game or even an exhibition.  And fast forward to now - Quintin Brewer's multiple DUI's and felony has never been mentioned even once outside of the message boards, the media hides, it, the coaching staff hides, it and the players are never suspended even for a minute.

Their star Devaughn Akoon-Purcell was actually recruited and signed while he had felony charges being pursued against him in Florida, and he played most of the past two years after aguilty plea and while on PROBATION for the felony charges, and none of that was ever mentioned nor ever seemed relevant to anyone at ISU. But of course that kind of atmosphere and lack of discipline within their system is the reason that despite having the best players in te league, they always falter, miss the NCAA and make buffoons of themselves with early exits from the NIT or other AEIOU Tournament.

I predict more of this.....since the atmosphere hasn't changed.

GO Aggies!!

Hey- here's a global warming rebuttal...

Read this article touting these modern expert global warming scientists coming up with an ingenius idea...
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/climate-researchers-employ-tool-1800s-whaling-logs

They make it sound like FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME EVER...the climate researchers are looking at past history to determine how the climate or the ARCTIC SEAS were - frozen or open...
they make it sound like this is groundbreaking research!!!!
They even imply that this "new" research is gonna prove global warming and refute anyone who denies the politically correct mantra that the earth is warming severely, we are all gonna be wiped out and it's getting hotter than it's ever been!

BALONEY - this stuff has all been researched many times before - but the reason they DO NOT TELL YOU THAT.....
..is because the ship records from the 1500's, 1600's, etc...actually prove something very interesting that blows away the entire argument of the GLOBAL WARMING gurus......

For almost 300 years - 1500's thru the 1800's...
the passage called the NORTHWEST PASSAGE was routinely navigable and open even in some winters and EVEN to the little rickety wooden sail boats of that era!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage

BUT-- there wasn't much of a reason to go that way regularly since it was long, tortuous, poorly charted, often filled with some small icebergs that would destroy wooden ships of that era...plus there wasn't a lot of reason to even bother to go that way, since nobody but Eskimos lived there and the route to get all the way thru to the Bering Strait then down to China or India was just as hard & long as the route around the African Cape...where the water and winds were favorable and ports along the way allowed restocking.

PLUS all they had were sails and the unpredictable winds (different from the southern routes that had the predictable, prevailing winds) made it very difficult, plus there were no ports along the way to restock on food, etc.  Had they had fuel or diesel power back in 1500-1800 then it would have been FAR more common...and likely used a ton.

BUT they could still sail in those waters as was documented in history MANY, MANY times!

We're talking the FAR NORTH route - north of Hudson Bay- all the way to the Bering Strait and down to the Orient!!!

Oddly the FACTS clearly prove that for 300+ years it must have been substantially warmer than it is even NOW!!!  Because ships could go that route - but they almost NEVER can do it nowadays because of arctic ice.

So even tho temperature records cannot be used because nobody back then had standardized thermometers placed all over the world - we DO have a way of knowing that it MUST HAVE BEEN warmer then- even warmer than it is now...
....and that, of course, would blow the absolute HELL out of their most common argument that it is now getting warmer than it has ever been!!!


LOOK IT UP...the "Northwest Passage" (and remember that rickety old boats in 1600's certainly couldn't have withstood much ice of any size - unlike BIG steel-hulled icebreakers today)
the NW-Passage really hasn't been used much for the past 200 years as it was before that because ice has been there year-round.

Only recently - in the 2000's with giant STEEL-HULLED ICEBREAKERS is this route now navigable again after a couple hundred years..
AND JUST AS EXPECTED....the global warming enthusiasts are using this argument that it PROVES global warming and proves we are now entering a stage in earth's history where we are warmer than we have EVER BEEN
Here's an example
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/10/why-the-northwest-passage-probably-wont-be-ready-for-shipping-any-time-soon/

So..... explain to me why if many, many weak little wooden ships were able to go that way 300-400 years ago
JUST WHY is it such a big deal now that a few big 3-foot thick steel-hulled icebreaker ships can do it now?  Kinda funny actually since they are banking on most people being ignorant and now knowing about the facts from the past.

Here is a global warming denier who makes the exact same argument I am making and it is a pretty danged solid argument that all the global warmers seem to completely ignore...
including a few years in the 1940's and 1950's that this passage was wide open and rickety old boats could make it just fine
https://www.skepticalscience.com/northwest-passage-has-been-navigated-in-the-past-intermediate.htm


FINAL CONCLUSION:
it is no warmer now than it has been MANY times & many years in our recent past 400 years...it is NOT getting warmer than it has ever been and if it WAS this warm back in the 1500-1800's and if we did have similar global warming back then....
... then by golly we got by just fine, we recovered, it got cold again then warm again in many repeated cycles, and that this current trend of a decade or two of warming is NOTHING NEW

A couple more followups and correcting lies..

From 2011-
correcting the stupidity and lies about the fundraising and the fact that Renaissance Coliseum and the $160 million fundraising was NOT accomplished by Joanne Glasser
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1213866806468167855#editor/target=post;postID=2629827392476746977;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=190;src=postname

From 2011-
Joanne Glasser hiring by acting as "a committee of one"
..also a prediction by Dr. Cross of serious upgrade in our schedule - even naming Villanova and touting his east coast connections...which of course never happened..
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1213866806468167855#editor/target=post;postID=813401176905421584;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=148;src=postname

From 2012-
who's to blame for Bradley's horrible record...
to those who asked for the housecleaning and new hires... look in a mirror..
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1213866806468167855#editor/target=post;postID=2131696760817277064;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=158;src=postname

From 2014-
Bradley's astounding plunge in attendance (and it's gone downhill even from there) - and it's all on Joanne, Cross, & Geno
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1213866806468167855#editor/target=post;postID=5918577626858656097;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=63;src=postname

From January, 2015-
The call for sweeping, unprecedented change and clean out the entire mess...
They have failed miserably - and this call for change was just a small part of what actually got it accomplished
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1213866806468167855#editor/target=post;postID=7699972609259158014;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=52;src=postname

Certainly some of the most remarkable predictions of all time

We have seen a lot of accurate predictions made years in advance when it comes to Bradley basketball - especially the idiotic moves made by Joanne Glasser and Mike Cross over the past 5-6 years.

But here are just a few that were stunning...these are from early in 2011!


http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=216529&postcount=10
"...if we fire JL, get a new guy in here who has to rebuild with all new players, I happen to believe even tropical weather won't keep us from dropping another 1000 on the attendance average -- "

We dropped 1000 right away!!! Then as time went on- plenty more than 1000!!!


http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=216535&postcount=12
"Hiring a new coach will cut into the budget sufficiently that any new coach will be hampered for years in his recruiting."

"I shudder at the thought of changing coaches now and being just as bad for the next 5 years.."

...OMG - not only just as bad - but actually way worse - historically worse - worse than Bradley basketball has ever been - with attendances dropping by 5,000-6,000!!!!


...and of course that comment was rebutted immediately by one of the know-nothings who claimed...
"I do not see this happening. That seems like an awful pessimistic outlook. ...
Why the doom and gloom?"

LOL - so who was right...?

DON'T those idiots now see....
they were soooo dammmm worried that if we kept Jim Les - then we'd be bad - maybe even finish lower than 4th in the MVC or drop to the bottom half of the Valley and our attendance may drop by even as much as 1000!!

Those fans were so incredibly anxious and desperate that they ignored the obvious warning signs of impending disaster, they handed the reigns to Joanne Glasser and crew - someone who had shown no ability to hire winning coaches EVER - AND they hopefully figured SHE'D RUN JIM LES OUT AND BRING IN A GREAT COACH WHO WOULD LEAD BRADLEY TO THE PROMISED LAND.

OMG - how wrong and how stupid they were yet they still claim to be experts who know what's going on.
Heck, if I was that wrong on so many things so many times, I'd hang it and stop talking.
In the end Joanne chose unwisely, sent Bradley into the worst four years of losing, the worst dropoff in attendance and the worst alienation of the incredibly loyal and faithful Bradley fans base ever imagined - UNPRECEDENTED!.
Now it'll take years to undo and repair all that damage and Tens of MILLIONS of dollars that were required to buy out those idiots' contracts and get them the heck outta here.
THE TRUTH can now be told without fear of retribution or having your job or season tickets revoked....
On the way out the door, the clueless PJ Star gave them the open mike to claim they'd done so much good for Bradley - yet when Dr. Cross was asked to expound on what his greatest accomplishments were - his only three bragging points were...

-the development of Kaboom - LOL - $100,000 to develop 
-the deal with adidas (which is actually a lousy deal and even apparel sales have plummeted and it's being written up that not going with Nike or UA can and has hurt recruiting)
-building the Ren-Col - which was supposed to be the Puterbaugh Center until Cross & Glasser's moves ticked off Puterbaugh and he yanked his $3 million pledge & cost us that much in funding (numerous others also yanked their gifts & pledges costing Bradley over $10 million) - but...
but the facts are that the fund-raising campaign started in 2004 (spearheaded by Dr. Broski, Jim Les, and Ken Kavanagh, 80% of the funds were already raised before Glasser was in place and much was already even completed - (see this article on the new MARKIN CENTER already completed and open in May of 2007)
http://www.bradley.edu/admissions/freshman/experience/studentlife/recreation/index.dot

plus....95% was collected and done before Cross was here) and even the name Renaissance was there before they were in place - and the entire thing was actually almost BUILT and DONE by the time Cross was in place.
He had NOTHING to do with it but takes all the credit - geez.

So all three of his top achievements are lies - they didn't happen!

Even more proof:

http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2015/08/for-record.html
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2015/09/just-some-simple-accounting-for-those.html
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2015/08/correcting-errors-again.html
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2014/12/some-interesting-facts.html

Geno's lawsuit appeals

Geno Ford's (and of course his lawyers') multiple appeals all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court have all been rejected.

Now what appears to be the final blow - yet another denial from the Ohio Supreme Court

http://www.co.portage.oh.us/pa/imageview.asp?A962E61EFAED3F6CB909BAFDD28BCD05C105E34E0C3D849E28ECDAFA0F77AFDA2629394F633CE6D6B38B22DA77B8681D22F6EC0C5DCD13C1680DC763CD2CCA6A232296BDEC3E1397239ED01B925F411C

It appears now that Geno will be liable for the $1.2 million in damages (plus interest since 2013), but he does have a little recourse.
This is terribly unfortunate and all the fault of the reckless rush by Glasser & Cross to find any warm body to take their open coaching position back in 2011 without as consideration for common sense and legal requirements - as they rode roughshod over all precedence and violated all kinds of legal requirements and contract laws.

As was demonstrated by the documents put into evidence and publicly available, Bradley University and Dr. Glasser & Dr. Cross, gave Geno written contractual assurance in his contract that Bradley would pick up the tab for his buyout & penalties up to $400,000.
So - now Bradley's on the hook for even more costs - $400K above and beyond all the legal expenses Bradley had to spend as well as all the costs incurred with the hapless search process, the massively overpaying of Geno (and his overpaid assistants) considering the ineptitude and lack of any real winning track record or NCAA bids, and the stupendous costs of cleaning house, firing Geno, replacing him, and then buying out his & Cross' & Glasser's ridiculously bloated contracts as well.

All in all, the 4 years from the time Glasser & Cross fired Jim Les - up to the firing of the whole incompetent bunch (2011-2015) cost Bradley somewhere in the realm of $20 million down the drain for the worst four years of Bradley basketball and the worst horrific fallout that was ALL completely predicted by the smart fans who clearly knew more than those bozos in charge (or the clueless fans who had their noses up JG's butt) - in 112 years that Bradley basketball has been in existence.

It is still gonna hurt Bradley for years into the future as more FALLOUT like this continues - but the proper steps are being taken now by competent people - quite unlike what we've seen for the past few years.
Go Braves!!!!

There is a trick to it

Bradley won the MVC Championship in both Men's & Women's Cross Country Saturday.
Kudos to the teams - great job - but there is one little trick to it.  To win a team sport like XC you need depth & Cross Country has a limit on the number of scholarships you can offer.
What Bradley does is use ALL their track scholarships to recruit cross country runners.

If you don't believe it - then check the rosters for BU XC & BU Track - they are identical.  So Bradley sacrifices any chance of winning track TEAM titles & always finishes last in track events - since we only do long distance.

This maneuver allows many, many more scholarships to offer in Cross Country than any other school offers - giving Bradley a huge advantage in recruiting.  Huge.

It's a nice trick - and I am happy Bradley wins the Conference Championships - but one more thing..
not many of the MVC schools even takes XC that seriously or pays much to their coaches.  Again - look at the performance beyond conference.  Once our runners get to the NCAA Regionals then they do well but do not advance.

So for those who claim this proves anything about the last admin - well....remember there were sports winning titles under the last guy too - and a lot more regularly.
Facts are facts - the last admin was really, really bad for Bradley, but they're gone now.