• Welcome to BradleyFans.com! Visitors are welcome, but we encourage you to sign up and register as a member. It's free and takes only a few seconds. Just click on the link to Register at the top right of the page, and follow instructions. If you have any problems or questions, click on the link at the bottom right of the page to Contact Us.

Bradley is 5th Most Improved Team in the Country

PTownHawkeye

PTownHawkeye

New member
In terms of wins improvement, Bradley is the 5th most improved team in the nation (out of 340 D-I teams), having already won 5 more games to this point than they won all of last year. See pg 2, fact 6.

http://www.mvc-sports.com/media/2012-13/mbasketball/mvc_1-21.pdf

Sidenote - didn't realize the Valley puts this weekly notebook out every week...some very interesting statistics across the league (like the fact that the Valley has the top 2 rebounders in the country who are under 6'1, Jeff Early and Troy Taylor).
 
I'll take this for what it's worth, and that is "mid-term" ranking of the most improved teams at the moment. Hopefully 3 or 4 more wins will keep us in the top 10 of this list by the end of the season. I'll be more concerned with how we end the season than where we are right now. But it is very encouraging to see where we are at right now.
 
I'm glad we're improved - we really do have some great kids who should be applauded for their hard work
 
It's all baby-steps in moving towards where we want to be. I know some may think BU has only beaten "bad" teams, but for the kids in the program wins are wins. They need to feel and see improvement in the form of wins.

I think we all like seeing the "big boys" play against Bradley, but frankly we don't yet have enough horses to play them game in, and game out. Besides the Valley is plenty good enough for BU at this point.

Keep moving forward with this progression and we will continue to get good results.
 
Looking at the schedule for the next few weeks, I hope we don't get stuck at +5 for a while.
 
Bradley and Illinois are both entering huge gauntlets in their schedules. If both can go .500 through those, I would be stunned, but giddy!
 
being most improved can be a mix of being better in the subsequent year or just being really, really bad the prior year then playing weaker opponents the next.

I also note that in mentioning we are (TIED FOR) 5th most improved - nobody seems to mention what teams we rank behind in spots 1 thru 4...
but I will mention them for the sake of completeness...
Here are the teams were are batlting for the title of most improved....

Bryant (only had 2 wins total last year),
Towson State (who are 9-10 after being 1-31 last year),
Canisius (were 1-19 in the weakly MAAC last year),
Santa Clara (were 0-17 last year in their conference, WCC)
 
tornado said:
being most improved can be a mix of being better in the subsequent year or just being really, really bad the prior year then playing weaker opponents the next.

I also note that in mentioning we are (TIED FOR) 5th most improved - nobody seems to mention what teams we rank behind in spots 1 thru 4...
but I will mention them for the sake of completeness...
Here are the teams were are batlting for the title of most improved....

Bryant (only had 2 wins total last year),
Towson State (who are 9-10 after being 1-31 last year),
Canisius (were 1-19 in the weakly MAAC last year),
Santa Clara (were 0-17 last year in their conference, WCC)
Click to expand...

Canisius is another program with a rich basketball history (we played them in the 1995 NIT). Again, surprising they fell so far down last season.
 
aggieman said:
I hate to say it but I don't think we will finish with much more than that +5 and likely won't be anywhere near that next year
Click to expand...

I'm not quite that pessimistic. At the very worst, we split against Evansville and UNI at home, beat ISU red at home, and split against Drake and MSU on the road. We could win more, but this should be the worst case scenerio. So I think +8 will be good, but I think we could do better.

Next year is a roll of the dice with our losing some seniors, but hopefully we will have more depth once the new players get used to Valley competition.
 
IMHO It will be nice for Geno to go to a recruit's home with a team that is getting publicity for being improved and where he can tell the recruit we have improved, but we want YOU to get us to the next level.
 
Bravesfan said:
I'm not quite that pessimistic. At the very worst, we split against Evansville and UNI at home, beat ISU red at home, and split against Drake and MSU on the road. We could win more, but this should be the worst case scenerio.
Click to expand...

I don't think you are giving the worst case scenario, Bravesfan. This is what we should do provided we play well.

Aside from Missouri St. and Drake (road games that we could easily lose), the other home opponents are as good or better than we are.

I wouldn't say that splitting against UE and UNI are even close to guarantees.
I think we win 2 more home games and 1 more road game. That is not even the worst case scenario, but more of a realistic prediction based on the competition and how we've fared against them this year, and factoring in a little about recent seasons.

I would be very happy to finish 8-10 in the Valley season, as this would mark a huge leap from last season, and even the one prior, and would give us a chance at staying out of the Thursday game.
 
Bravesfan said:
Canisius is another program with a rich basketball history (we played them in the 1995 NIT). Again, surprising they fell so far down last season.
Click to expand...

We played them long before that also when teams like Bradley, St. Bonaventure, St. Joseph, not my alma mater on Peoria's Southside St. Joseph, Dusquene, and Canisius were considered great programs. Keep up the good work Geno and Braves.
 
LittleBrave said:
I don't think you are giving the worst case scenario, Bravesfan. This is what we should do provided we play well.

Aside from Missouri St. and Drake (road games that we could easily lose), the other home opponents are as good or better than we are.

I wouldn't say that splitting against UE and UNI are even close to guarantees.
I think we win 2 more home games and 1 more road game. That is not even the worst case scenario, but more of a realistic prediction based on the competition and how we've fared against them this year, and factoring in a little about recent seasons.

I would be very happy to finish 8-10 in the Valley season, as this would mark a huge leap from last season, and even the one prior, and would give us a chance at staying out of the Thursday game.
Click to expand...

Well I suppose we can lose every game from here on out, but I'm saying that this team should do no worse than 3 more wins this season. And while Evansville and UNI are better teams, we beat two teams last year that were better than us. No reason why we can't upset one or two of these types of teams this year as well, particularly at home.
 
aggieman said:
I hate to say it but I don't think we will finish with much more than that +5 and likely won't be anywhere near that next year
Click to expand...

Please add a bit of why you feel that way for the rest of us not to see you as just a negative poster. I can see it both ways but will hold my opinion until we see who we have recruited. We will have a PG next year and WL can slide right into the 2 spot, so I'm betting our back court play will improve. Trust me DSE is my favorite player on this team right now so I'm just not throwing that out. JE is a good solid BU player but is very replaceable. WE on the other hand will be so much harder replace and if we do not get an impact big then you may be correct. This steam though and I believe it is because of what WE is bringing to the table is surpassing my expectations.

Note I never thought WE would be able to come back from his knee issues and give us as much as he is. That to me is the biggest surprise this year for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top