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Final: Bradley 69 Truman State 47

- Won by 20
- Hickman returned and got minutes
- After a really rough first few possessions, the ghost of Kyle Thomas played very well defensively
- Burch showed some great tenacity when he was having a lot of trouble shooting

We shot terribly and still won fairly easily - just not going to complain too much about it

Let's go to the Valley
 
Bad shooting night but still won a game that should be a given.

It was nice to see Thomas at least play some meaningful minutes, but why no Ellis? I really don't understand Wardle's rotation this year, it seems to be all over the place.
 
17 offensive rebounds and 20 second chance points really helped. Nice that we only had 7 turnovers and held them to 4 threes.
 
I actually think Brian’s rotations are understandable. If you don’t play hard,play defense and play smart you don’t play. You don’t play even if you are more talented than Hardtke if he practices smarter and harder. That may frustrate folks and may even lose a few games but no discipline and no implications have been practiced before -see Geno Ford era. Not saying this year will be great but Brian’s strategy has worked. Recruiting needs focus-particularly with respect to the portal…
 
I think Thomas has more skills then Jonovic and wish he had played more in the non. conf. season. Hard to understand the reasoning on giving minutes to walkons instead of more for scholarship players. This is not a good sign of players we brought in from the portal plus I would rather give more minutes to Burch and Atlason , they are the future. We shot the ball very poorly tonight both from the field and the free throw line. Leons missed 2 dunks, one layup and a ton of free throws. He could have scored 25 points tonight . We were terrible on offense against a mediocre team. I want to see the team that beat UAB on the road because the one I have seen lately is not even close to that same team.
 
houstonbrave said:
I actually think Brian’s rotations are understandable. If you don’t play hard,play defense and play smart you don’t play. You don’t play even if you are more talented than Hardtke if he practices smarter and harder. That may frustrate folks and may even lose a few games but no discipline and no implications have been practiced before -see Geno Ford era. Not saying this year will be great but Brian’s strategy has worked. Recruiting needs focus-particularly with respect to the portal…
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Somebody gets it!

Brian went at great length to say that "certain players" didn't show up after the break ready to play and their minutes could be taken away as a result of it.

I grow tired of the incessant whining about the recruiting when basically none of us are there day in and day out. Would you really be happier if we had more "depth" and Pettigrew was here but he was tearing the team apart because he was a bad apple? (Hypothetical, not saying he necessarily was that way) Should we just throw guys out there who clearly can't play just because they have a scholarship and as a result are "supposed" to get minutes?

Brian also spoke for awhile in last game's postgame chat to explain how he's still trying to figure out what buttons to push with these guys because his motivational tactics that have often worked on past teams don't seem to always resonate with this crew. He's learning with this group just as they also are learning.

So, to the question "why are the rotations so weird" - the answer is, he's got a lot of guys who aren't bringing it every night and hasn't found the mix yet to get the most out of the whole roster, but he's trying to find it.

I also think there's a massive difference between saying "we were terrible on offense" versus "we shot terribly on offense". If you're getting open shots and you just miss them, that's actually good offense and poor execution. We shouldn't confuse the two.
 
tomahawk chop said:
I think Thomas has more skills then Jonovic and wish he had played more in the non. conf. season. Hard to understand the reasoning on giving minutes to walkons instead of more for scholarship players. This is not a good sign of players we brought in from the portal plus I would rather give more minutes to Burch and Atlason , they are the future. We shot the ball very poorly tonight both from the field and the free throw line. Leons missed 2 dunks, one layup and a ton of free throws. He could have scored 25 points tonight . We were terrible on offense against a mediocre team. I want to see the team that beat UAB on the road because the one I have seen lately is not even close to that same team.
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BW had enough of Burch's defense tonight. When he came off the floor, he gave him the side stare for about 20 seconds. He was also getting on Meta and Atlason. He was obviously making a point of playing smart and hard. I loved seeing it.
 
If people only see the end of the game score and think we blew Truman State out they would be mistaken. They don't have a lot of talent but what they do have is a system that is consistent and they are always playing hard, 2 things that we will need to improve on if we're going to have a chance at success in the Valley. A couple of other things that we need to keep working on is shot selection and FT shooting which both sucked rocks in this game. When you only have 14 assists on 26 made shots you're just not doing a good job in initiating your offense. How many air balls did we have from 3 tonight? 5 or 6? And none of them had to be put up because of the shot clock running out. As for our FT shooting I'm tired of talking about. It's pretty tough when you can't trust your best player at the end of the game and unless Malevy gets his confidence back teams will foul him at the end of games. And it could cost us some W's. The good stuff was our defense locked them down in the last 10:00. And we did outrebound them by a 42-28 margin, 16 of them on the offensive end. It was good to see Conner get some minutes and hopefully it helps gets his legs back under him. I thought Darius had a good overall game as he had 11 point6s, 9 rebounds, 4 steals and 0 turnovers. At the end of the day we did end our non conference season at 8-3. Not too shabby. Hopefully starting at Valpo on Wednesday our Valley season starts pointing upward.
 
houstonbrave said:
I actually think Brian’s rotations are understandable. If you don’t play hard,play defense and play smart you don’t play. You don’t play even if you are more talented than Hardtke if he practices smarter and harder.;
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I agree. Cade isn’t tearing up the court, but he isn’t making a bunch of stupid turnovers by trying to be a hot dog. His enthusiasm alone clearly makes a difference when he is on the court. He’s not there trying to make the highlight reel so he can improve his brand. he’s there for the team.
 
Here is a twitter post from Ja'Shon Henry about Cade Hardtke- https://twitter.com/henry_jashon/status/1740621012105044322

Ja'Shon was replying to a post by national sportswriter Bill Simmons about former #1 pick Cade Cunningham. He is having a great season, averaging 23.3 ppg for the NBA Detroit Pistons, who have now lost 28 games in a row. But Ja'Shon turned the topic to his former teammate Cade Hardtke.
 
OT, but was that the worst rendition of the National Anthem ever? Almost as if that doomed us to a bad shooting night,
even though they dumped the blue warmups..
Why do the singers have to go full stage-artist and jazz up their own individual version to call attention to themselves?
The band screamed and cheered, so I guess they think that's all that matters.
Back on topic, KT needs to stay in the gym until he's shot 1000 layups or made 100 in a row.
 
Ok here is my take on last nights game after watching it again. Connor was favoring his ankle so I think it is still tender. The offense executed very well. They got themselves open. They just did not make their shots. Do I want them to make their shots. Of course. But this is not a bad shooting team. They have several guys that i feel comfortable shooting 3 pointers. One of them is in the top 50 in the country. Last night he hit 60% of his shots. Those shots will fall. I think Christmas made them sluggish first half. They played better second half. Meta showed hustle out there. He still needs to keep working on defense. I am hoping the door is open for Thomas. He showed what he could contribute. He needs to get more comfortable around the basket. It would be nice to get him into the rotation
 
I just think it is a really big problem when your coach does not know who to play after all the practices and now into this many games. The Pettigrew thing is on maybe they should have asked his previous coach more about him before giving him a scholarship. I say Thomas has more upside then Jonovic after last night and wish he had been given more minutes during the non conf. season. The 3 portal players have not helped much so far when we were in need of guys that could help immediately because of who we lost in the portal. I also do not think coach is handling the situation well this season in screaming at his players everytime they make a mistake. I understand he knows how to coach as far as X"S and O"S but he is not doing a good job as far as game management. Our new players do not look comfortable on the floor most likely because if they make a mistake he will pull them out immediately and yell at them instead of actually coach them. He did not do or act like this in the past and hoping he can do better in coaching them and controlling his emotions in the future.
 
tomahawk chop said:
I just think it is a really big problem when your coach does not know who to play after all the practices and now into this many games. The Pettigrew thing is on maybe they should have asked his previous coach more about him before giving him a scholarship. I say Thomas has more upside then Jonovic after last night and wish he had been given more minutes during the non conf. season. The 3 portal players have not helped much so far when we were in need of guys that could help immediately because of who we lost in the portal. I also do not think coach is handling the situation well this season in screaming at his players everytime they make a mistake. I understand he knows how to coach as far as X"S and O"S but he is not doing a good job as far as game management. Our new players do not look comfortable on the floor most likely because if they make a mistake he will pull them out immediately and yell at them instead of actually coach them. He did not do or act like this in the past and hoping he can do better in coaching them and controlling his emotions in the future.
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I would disagree with a lot of this post. BW knows how to coach. Unless you are at practice everyday to see how guys do in practice then we will not understand his rotation. The question has been brought up several times about Thomas not playing and then tonight he gets quite a bit of playing time. Coach mentioned in his post game show how Thomas was starting to understand what it was going to take to get on the floor and he was rewarded with playing time tonight. Did he miss some easy shots and take shots that were questionable? Yes but he was hustling and nto fouling constantly. If he keeps this up he will help us down the road.
As for Pettigrew? It sounds like he was a cancer on the team and that might still be hurting the team. It was mentioned as to why you wouldn't with his previous coach but as one of my college professors said when asked about a teacher he wanted to get rid of he answered with "Your gain is my loss". His previous coach might have felt the same way.
Others have sked about Ellis not Playing last night and I thought coach answered that in his post game comments when he said he could tell by the way certain players were taking the shoot around in the afternoon that they didn't have their heads in the game and were not ready to play so they didn't get on the floor.
Remember playing time isn't guaranteed but is earned and that is why Cade gets minutes because he works his tale off while others just go through the motions at time..
 
houstonbrave said:
DC-What did Jashon’s post say ? When I try to link to it -it says post has been deleted.
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Looks like he deleted the tweet.
He had replied to the post about the Detroit Pistons' Cade Cunningham by giving a shout out to "my guy Cade", referring to Bradley's Cade Hardtke.

By the way, Detroit has to be a little bummed about their basketball teams this season. The Detroit Pistons lost in overtime last night to the Boston Celtics and are now 2-29 this season (.065 winning pct). They have a 28 game losing streak, which is tied for the longest losing streak in NBA history with the 2014-15 - 2015-16 Philadephia 76ers., who lost 28 straight over 2 seasons.
The Pistons' 28-game losing streak this season is already the longest single-season losing streak in NBA history.
The worst record for a full NBA season was set by the 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats with a record of 7-59 for a winning percentage of .106.


But the Pistons aren't alone in being awful. The University of Detroit-Mercy, a member of the Horizon League, lost last night to a bad IUPUI team (NET 358 ), and they are now 0-14 on the season. That is the worst record in Division I.
The good news is there are enough terrible teams in the Horizon League this year that will likely ensure that they will not go winless the rest of the season.
 
basketball nut said:
I would disagree with a lot of this post. BW knows how to coach. Unless you are at practice everyday to see how guys do in practice then we will not understand his rotation. The question has been brought up several times about Thomas not playing and then tonight he gets quite a bit of playing time. Coach mentioned in his post game show how Thomas was starting to understand what it was going to take to get on the floor and he was rewarded with playing time tonight. Did he miss some easy shots and take shots that were questionable? Yes but he was hustling and nto fouling constantly. If he keeps this up he will help us down the road.
As for Pettigrew? It sounds like he was a cancer on the team and that might still be hurting the team. It was mentioned as to why you wouldn't with his previous coach but as one of my college professors said when asked about a teacher he wanted to get rid of he answered with "Your gain is my loss". His previous coach might have felt the same way.
Others have sked about Ellis not Playing last night and I thought coach answered that in his post game comments when he said he could tell by the way certain players were taking the shoot around in the afternoon that they didn't have their heads in the game and were not ready to play so they didn't get on the floor.
Remember playing time isn't guaranteed but is earned and that is why Cade gets minutes because he works his tale off while others just go through the motions at time..
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I stated he knows how to coach, just is not doing well in handling during game situations. His expectations for the new players to be perfect on defense is over the top. He is embarrassing himself and his players with the way he is acting on the sidelines. He has gotten mad at his asst. coaches at times also which just looks bad. He has to be in better control of his emotions in order to coach his players better.
 
Maybe we need to hire you as the coach then. I'm not that close to the bench so I have no idea as to what he says to the players but they need to grow up. Now you might be sitting close enough to here what is said so I'm not going to argue with you about his coaching. My big thing is none of us are at practice day in and day out so what do we really know about his decisions. This isn't high school anymore. I see lot's of coaches that are harder on their players then BW is.
I, honestly, don't see him coaching differently then in the past but I do see players that aren't use to it and aren't responding to tough college coaching.
 
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