Sam Maniscalco had one of the finest games I can recall by a player at Bradley, and a tremendous game for any point guard at any D-I school!
He was a team leader, and tallied an impressive array of statistics...
19 points, 10 assists, and not a single turnover in a 45 minute game that Sammy played almost 40 of 'em...
In addition 7-7 on crucial FT's and even 2 steals and a block..
He is the BEST player in the Valley and I hope those who do the voting are paying attention.
There was a nice column by one writer this morning giving Dyricus some props for his good game, but oddly there was NOT one single mention by that writer of the career game Sam Maniscalco had.....you gotta wonder did he see the game?? If he did, what does it take to impress enough to get a mention??
Here's yet another expert who does give Sammy the POY award...it's AAU coach and basketball expert Mike Mullins...
http://twitter.com/wolves10/status/9635156665
Bradley also gets some nice help off the bench from Dyricus Simms-Edwards and Andrew Warren had yet another nice night from the field...18 points on NINE shot attempts, and 3-4 from 3-pt range...
Both Andrew and Sam are deserving of 1st Team All Valley!
Chris Roberts isn't among the leaders in scoring stats, but he's been having a great run the past few games as well with tremendous all-around games both offensively and defensively...
I love this team and they are fun to watch.
Hey -- did you know....??
--Bradley is averaging 69 ppg in the Valley, 2nd best in the entire league
--BU's FT percentage is among the top teams in the Valley and all the guys who shoot the best and who shoot the most are going to be back next year
--Our shooting from the field is among the best teams as well
--and our 3-pt shooting is TOPS in the Valley in conference games at 37.4% and at the same time we are the best 3-pt defending team at 31.8% - so to heck with those critics who say Bradley does NOT defend the 3-pt shot well.
--BU is also next and next the best rebounding team, among the top 3 in steals, and of course top 3 in attendance.
--BU has 2 of the top 4 scorers (Warren & Maniscalco) and 3 of the top 8.
(it's an absolute travesty that the guy who will get recognized as the scoring leader in the Valley would finish 7th in the league if he played the same schedule as everyone else -- but he played a 345th worst non-conference schedule, against horribly weak lollipop teams and launched a Valley tops (by far) 378 shot attempts just to barely edge out the better scorers in the league.
Note that Sam Maniscalco shot approximately 150 fewer shot attempts on the season, and yet in Valley scoring actually outscored OE by a bunch 15.0 ppg to 13.8 ppg!!!
--we also have 3 of the top 16 rebounders in the league, the only team besides UNI to do so...)
As noted elsewhere...Bradley is clearly one of the two hottest teams in the Valley over the whole last month...
going 5-3 in February and beating both of the teams leading the Valley...and their only two losses being a 1-pointer and an OT loss.
The only other team even in the ballpark, ISU is also hot right now, but I am confident we can get them in the Valley Tourney.
UNI has lost to Bradley and to the worst team in the Valley
BTW-- this just may be the reason that Bradley has had several top recruits visiting lately - a couple at last night's game...and keep your eye open on campus this weekend as well!!
BU is also one of the ONLY teams that is doing significantly better than where they were picked in the preseason.
UNI is right where they were expected to be and surely nobody expected them to lose to Evansville, so maybe, just maybe they are slipping...
Then the next three teams as they were picked in the preseason poll, Creighton, ISU, and SIU are either right where they were picked or they are well below where they were picked to finish.
Among the top teams in the Valley, only Bradley and Wichita State are significantly outperforming their preseason expectations....so kudos to the Braves and the coaching staff, job well done despite the negative nellies that even populate the boards at Wichita and the other top teams in the Valley.
In fact, as good as Northern Iowa is doing, check this out...
just as recently as the past month there have been threads bemoaning UNI's complete and total LACK of success in the post-season and the changes maybe needed to get past this problem..
and as recently as the DePaul loss last fall and even moreso a few of their bad losses last season (UIC, InSU)...there were people wanting to can their coach, get rid of their current players and start over! What a mindset...but as hard to believe as it is....it seems to exist just about everywhere....people are just not happy with quality...they cannot recognize when they have it so good...
It happened at the tail end of the Molinari period and whining rants helped drive coach Mo out with all the great players he had at the time! Just makes you want to shake you head in disbelief...
Andrew Warren now has 982 career points and might hit 1000 this Saturday.
I believe at the outset of next season, Bradley will be the ONLY team with a player who has scored 1000 career points for a Valley team...and we will have TWO of them!!
Nobody else will have even one..and the only team even close is Creighton's Kenny Lawson will return for his senior season and currently has 864 points.
Andrew also has 148 made 3-pointers in his career so far...and if he stays healthy he could get close to 250 or even more!
Jeremy Crouch finished his career with 262....
Just a thought on recruiting...
We have seen many times that a kid will jump at a chance to sit on the bench at a BCS-type school who gets on TV all the time even spurning comparable offers by a mid-major where the kid could play a bunch even as a freshman and possibly be a star...
we have seen this with DeAaron Williams, Matt Roth, and now with Darius Smith, a BU recruit from last year...
Here's a little reminder of Darius Smith who isn't playing at all at UConn
Anyway -- just a few thoughts from the perspective of the schools doing the recruiting....
--First - if you are a BCS-type school, even ones on the lower end like Northwestern, Indiana, etc...then you can still expect to occasionally land a big name kid and recruit the better talent away from the mid-majors. Players like John Shurna, Nick Fruendt, Matt Roth, Iman Shumpert, Darius Smith, etc...are all proof of that. And only when you are desperate with an open scholarship do you really ever need to go too hard after the mid-level recruits, the kids outside the Top 150...but even then, as Justin Dentmon, Anthony Grundy, Josh Tabb....all prove, you can still almost always steal the kids you want away from any mid-major.
--Then if we look at the bottom of the spectrum of schools, the low majors and bottom dwellers of mid-major conferences, well these guys are happy to land just about any kid with talent....and they don't even bother to make phone calls to the recruits at the 3-Star level and up.
--so that brings us to the teams, like Bradley, who are fighting to be among the best non-BCS schools, and the best mid-majors....
There are roughly 75 BCS-type teams (major conferences plus major state schools like Memphis, New Mexico, Utah, etc..)....then there are about 100 of these stronger mid-majors who dwell in the Valley, A-10, CUSA, MWC, WCC, Colonial, etc...
These are the teams that have the exceptionally tough task of trying to recruit themselves to the top of the mid-major pile...
If they don't at least give a shout out and an offer to some top 3-Star and 4-Star guys, then nobody takes them seriously. But in doing so and striking out on them, you incur the criticism of fans who say "hey you keep striking out!"
But you sure don't want to use up all your scholarships on the obscure kids and the 4-5 year projects...or surely you'll get bashed with comments like "why do we keep recruiting nobodies and waste scholarships on kids who never play?"
So the goal is to keep trying to land as top of talent as you can, meaning occasionally aiming at a good kid who's under the radar (Taylor Brown or Dyricus), yet keep going after the top talent and rarely, even though the effort and the time expense may be exhaustive...you're going to land one or two....
I think our staff at Bradley does a fine job and we get talent comparable to the better teams in our conference, and we prove it by beating every ranked team we played this year!!
I am anxious to see who we land this spring...the spring signing period is April 14 to May 19, 2010.
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?p=168798#post168798
Speaking of recruits...check this guy out....Dwight McCombs (6-8 forward)....ex-Illinois Wolves teammate of Sammy Maniscalco and Carlton Fay...
McCombs is a sophomore at Moraine Valley CC (transferred there from Miami OH)and is averaging 22.3 ppg, and 13.3 rpg...hitting on 70% of his shots!!
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