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Final scores- Sun. 1/31- INSU 60 BU 57 - Monday Feb. 1- INSU 67 BU 55

Ja'Shon Henry is likely to play in Sunday's game at Indiana State, but it will ultimately be a game-time decision.
There apparently is no change in Ari Boya's status. Ari has missed the last 8 games with the foot injury.
 
Need to be real careful with JaShon. You don't want this to be a recurring thing. As far as Boya goes I'm assuming this isn't a season ending injury because they haven't announced what's wrong with his foot so I would think that means he is going to play sometime before the season is over. Right? Unless it was announced already and I just didn't see it.
 
You are right, nothing new has been said other than what was initially announced- that it is a foot injury, and that he is week-to-week. Here was the initial announcement from over 3 weeks ago (January 9)-
https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/1348004180892516358

But the last time we saw Ari was in the video of the Valpo game. He was there with the team, but in street clothes and still wearing the boot.

ari.png
 
I agree. Why is Hannah not playing? I would much rather see Hannah and Kent then Mast and Thomas. I have not seen every minute of Bradley this year, but I have seen enough to believe that Mast and Thomas should not get any valuable minutes. I believe that both have the skill set of a 13th man. East has to hit some of his easy looks. Nolan frustrates me. We all know that his strength is his ability to dribble drive to his right and get to the rim. How about promoting that and making someone stop him in a 1v1 situation? With all the talk of our team defense earlier this year, it has been tough to watch during conference play.
 
Seems like the opposing coaches have figured out the Braves week spots and attack them. Not helping out in the paint on D' or being out of position on rebounds....watch Mast, never in right position for a rebound and seems to have bad hands when it comes to him. Still too much 1on 1 and so far not working out...time for Nolan to show up.
 
Starting to come to a conclusion.....Braves are playing like an 8 or 9 seed, nothing stands out on O' or D'....not getting steals, turnovers mostly unforced, offense standing around at 3 pt line and today getting out rebounded plus poor passing has become the standard. ;-)
 
I disagree with Mast being the problem. No he’s not been great, but how many freshmen big men have been as advanced as him at the Valley level? If he can get his shot back, he’s a big body and good passer. That will play with three years to keep improving. This is also his first year back from an injury.

But veteran guys like Nolan have no business continuing to play if he doesn’t pass well, commits unforced turnovers, and forces bad shots. He doesn’t contribute much else, and he hasn’t shot well or gotten to the line much either.

The biggest problem to me, even if we somehow get the turnovers and one-on-one offense fixed, is that we can’t shoot. You cannot have several guards who have zero three point shot, and keep decent spacing. Especially when the defensive effort on opposing threes isn’t anywhere near great.

I said it before, if this doesn’t turn around quick play East (hopefully he learns to play smarter), Ville, Kent, Hannah, Mast, and even Linke a lot because those guys will all be contributing for two to three more years and all have potential. Henry and Childs deserve to play too. So play that 8. Right now, Nolan, Thomas, and Kingsby don’t offer us anything for now or the future. No sense playing them.
 
Well, at least I woke up Mast a little in the 2nd half. Somebody had to say something! I believe that Mast and Linke are too immobile and limitations outweigh the positives. Have to find a way to get Nolan to wake up. His body language has been poor the last few games and seems to complain every time he is called for a foul or does not get a call. We need Nolan to score. Agree with poor shot selection comments. We are much better when we can get into the paint and then use that to set up our 3-point shooters. We did not need Mast jackin a 3 late. I did like seeing Ville and Kent on the floor at the same time for awhile today.
 
Bradley continues to find ways to lose games they should have won. This game it was because of a continued turnover problem (14), continued horrible 3-point shooting (3-16), really poor rebounding (INSU had 39 rebounds to Bradley's 30, including a whopping 14 offensive rebounds), unnecessary fouling (Bradley 20 personal fouls to INSU's 9), and uncharacteristically poor defense. Still Bradley had the lead and had a great chance to win, but a turnover, a foul, and 3 missed shots on their last 3 possessions allowed Indiana State to retake the lead and win the game.

Final score- Indiana State 60 Bradley 57
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore?gameId=401267025

Bradley is now 9-9, 3-6 and they play again Monday at 4 pm.
 
Today Mast, Henry and Ville were it.....Nolan's foul trouble made his day end up terrible. Have not seen stats but cannot remember him scoring. The poor passing was a team problem today. At some point you have to value the ball. Seems like the goal of every valley coach is to jump out and double the point....it is working and causes most of our poor passes. I also do not believe you will win many games with Kingsby at PG for a sustained amount of time. Any chance Childs is tired....not playing Hannah just ups his minutes....never seen him miss so much on his shot with a couple air balls.
 
East, Kingsby, and Nolan were No Shows. So was Hannah, but that was the coach's decision. My last post I said I like Ville off the bench. Keep him and Henry coming off the bench. We have no guards that I trust.
 
BUfan14 said:
I disagree with Mast being the problem. No he’s not been great, but how many freshmen big men have been as advanced as him at the Valley level? If he can get his shot back, he’s a big body and good passer. That will play with three years to keep improving. This is also his first year back from an injury.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, BU fan14. Mast is going to be a star for us, and everyone expects so much from him forgetting that he's a freshman. A freshman doing as much as he has for us already this year is astounding. Our main problem is we can't seem to rebound without Boya, and secondarily, foul calls are killing us.

I looked up the foul calls for this 5 game losing streak and we've had 104 personal fouls to our opponents 62 (today was 20 to 9, Valpo game was 30 to 16!). For the year, excluding the two D3 games, we are 296 personal fouls for us to 233 for our opponents and we've had 1 game with fewer fouls than our opponent and 1 game with the same amount. That discrepancy equals losing, especially when we aren't hitting the few free throws we get and our opponents are nailing theirs.

We're not playing well, so I'm not going to blame the refs, however, the last seconds of this game, we had our hands on the ball 3 times and each player was severely hacked without a whistle, and as soon as an ISU player touches the ball, they call us for a personal foul to all but end the game. I'm sorry, but that was completely bogus. In the end, we should be blowing out teams like ISU Blue, but we aren't, and right now, we are the worst team in the valley.

Let's hope we can turn things around tomorrow. I still believe, but it's getting harder every day.
 
What position did Mast play in Europe? I'm guessing from watching him he played a lot more outside than in. If I were him, blessed with a 6'9" 245 pound body and good hands, I'd be watching every minute of film on Cameron Krutwig I could get. I could be way off, but it looks like Mast is new to playing the post. And of course he's not used to the physical nature of the game here. I still think he has a lot of potential in coming years. We'll see if he has the heart for it.
 
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Mast, we need Nolan and East to play well and we certainly want Childs taking more than 8 shots. It's frustrating to watch when we have long droughts without scoring and our team defense is slow as well. I love how the TV guys made the Bradley/ Wardle excuse that lack of practice time affects how they rebound. If you're 18-21 years old and you need a structured practice and a rebounding drill to remind you how to put in the effort to box out and jump and grab a board, I think you have a problem. Even before this game and even when we have outrebounded opponents this year, we have often done poorly with grabbing defensive rebounds on the weak side of perimeter shots. Look back at the game film. Mast is most certainly the most glaring player in that respect along with Ville but even Childs has been lazy at times in games and had trouble with getting a clean defensive board without tapping the ball around. And not to rant, but I will say on record that Mast will never be a star. He will not be Krutwig. I believe that Hannah is getting about half the minutes that Mast is getting this year and I would much prefer this reversed. I don't like the knee injury excuse either. I can't imagine that Mast was incredibly mobile prior to the ACL tear. He doesn't jump, doesn't play big, and can't knock down perimeter shots. He moves like the tin man. I have seen enough of Mast missing perimeter shots terribly as well (missing rim completely) that as a coach I would not encourage him to shoot from the outside, especially early in any possession. Hannah, in my mind, has the opportunity to truly be a star. He is incredibly athletic and hopefully will get stronger over time. I am hopeful that his free throw shooting this year is an anomaly.
 
Mast played some post with his pro team in Netherlands, but a lot of the Euopean teams like to have their big men play away from the basket, and Rienk did much of the time. He will get more consistent with his perimeter shot and I think he'll become more effective inside, too. He is still only halfway through is first season, and big men usually take a couple years to fully recover from ACL surgery.
It is discouraging to lose close games like these last 3, and nobody is using the injury excuse, though this is another one I think that would have ended much different if Ari Boya was healthy and playing.

Game recap-
https://bradleybraves.com/news/2021/...ate-60-57.aspx

Box score-
https://bradleybraves.com/sports/men...boxscore/19721

It's not hard to see why Bradley lost with a look at those stats.
Perimeter shooting- Ville was 3-6 from three, but the entire rest of the team was 0-10.
Fouls- I've never seen a team have such an imbalance of fouls called against them, especially considering Bradley is not the most physical team. Yes, a lot of them were justified, but it sure looked to me that Indiana State got away with a lot more contact and bumping against our shooters without getting called for fouls.
And rebounding... Bradley seems to have gone from one of the better rebounding teams in the MVC to the worst rebounding team overnight. Indiana State is not a good rebounding team, yet they dominated the boards. Maybe that can be partly explained by Ari Boya's absence, but our guards are not helping out much. BUt our top 4 guards totalled only 2 rebounds for the game! Kingsby and East both had ZERO rebounds, and Viile and Nolan each had 1. A total of 2 rebounds among them in 100 minutes of floor time. Jayson Kent had 3 rebounds by himself in just 9 minutes of playing time. The top 4 guards for Indiana State totalled 16 rebounds among them. Our guards are way too athletic to go the entire game without a rebound. On offense, they seem to backpeddle as soon as the Bradley shot is released. On defense, they don't go for the rebounds like they should.
Let's hope these problems get corrected and we turn things around tomorrow.
 
Tommy said:
Totally agree, BU fan14. Mast is going to be a star for us, and everyone expects so much from him forgetting that he's a freshman. A freshman doing as much as he has for us already this year is astounding. Our main problem is we can't seem to rebound without Boya, and secondarily, foul calls are killing us.

I looked up the foul calls for this 5 game losing streak and we've had 104 personal fouls to our opponents 62 (today was 20 to 9, Valpo game was 30 to 16!). For the year, excluding the two D3 games, we are 296 personal fouls for us to 233 for our opponents and we've had 1 game with fewer fouls than our opponent and 1 game with the same amount. That discrepancy equals losing, especially when we aren't hitting the few free throws we get and our opponents are nailing theirs.

We're not playing well, so I'm not going to blame the refs, however, the last seconds of this game, we had our hands on the ball 3 times and each player was severely hacked without a whistle, and as soon as an ISU player touches the ball, they call us for a personal foul to all but end the game. I'm sorry, but that was completely bogus. In the end, we should be blowing out teams like ISU Blue, but we aren't, and right now, we are the worst team in the valley.

Let's hope we can turn things around tomorrow. I still believe, but it's getting harder every day.
Click to expand...

I agree with you Tommy. The last possession Kingsby got fouled on the drive with Henry getting the offensive rebound and also getting fouled with the put back. You have to call both of them...
 
PistolP said:
Look back at the game film. Mast is most certainly the most glaring player in that respect along with Ville but even Childs has been lazy at times in games and had trouble with getting a clean defensive board without tapping the ball around. And not to rant, but I will say on record that Mast will never be a star. He will not be Krutwig.
Click to expand...

Ok, this I agree with. Mast most likely will not be Krutwig, but very few would. Krutwig is the 4th best players statistically to come out of the MVC, so there is quite a bit of room to fit my personal definition of 'star' other than reaching Krutwig (or even Childs) level.

Mast doesn't block out well, you are 100% correct on that, but neither does anyone else on the team right now, How often did we give up an O board when one ISU player was surrounded by 4 red jerseys? So on that, we are definitely in agreement. That being said, Mast is a Freshman and is averaging 5.2 rebounds per game, which is good for 3rd on the team behind Boya and Childs. He is averaging more than Henry at this point and is playing fewer minutes per game, so I think there's room for patience with this kid. He is after all, just a kid, regardless of his size!
 
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