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Bradley tennis

Da Coach said:
Averaging over 20 wins a year is not mediocrity, no matter how many times the current admins and JL-haters keep repeating it. I am sure it makes them feel better to keep repeating it, considering the woeful state basketball and other sports have been in since the extensive changes.
But right now, most faithful Bradley fans would be happy just to see the program get back to mediocre. :(
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I think if you are going to compare W/L records, it's more valid to compare regular season records. Would you rather have an 0-1 NCAA appearance or a 5-0 CBI appearance?
 
An NCAA appearance with an 0-1 record is nice, but leaves some fans unsatisfied. Going 5-0 in the CBI is also a nice way to end a season, and fans get to see additional games. I agree that CBI wins aren't the same as NCAA wins, but they are wins, and usually over good teams, not 320+ RPI teams like IUPUI. So I don't understand the mentality of ridiculing when your team actually wins games against good opponents, and calling 21 and 22-win seasons "mediocre". Sure, I'd prefer an NCAA run, but winning 20+ games against good teams will always trump losing seasons, and NCSOS's like we've seen the past couple years in the 300+ range.
 
Brief PJ Star article-
http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140512/SPORTS/140519802/11130/SPORTS

And the article from BUBraves.com
http://www.bradleybraves.com/ViewAr...508&DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=209494563&DB_OEM_ID=3400

We'll probably never know the entire story of why he quit, but it's reported men's tennis coach Tim Gray quit to "pursue other opportunities in California." He had tremendous success at the Division II and III levels. He appears to be from the East Coast, and has spent most of his career in the East and Southeast. Maybe he didn't like the Midwest, or maybe he just didn't like Division I and the MVC or didn't think he could be successful here? But we wish him the best of luck in pursuing opportunities in California.
 
We have nicer weather here year-around. However, this week is not a good indication of it. Four days in a row in the mid to upper 90's. Hoping it cools off quickly.
 
Da Coach said:
An NCAA appearance with an 0-1 record is nice, but leaves some fans unsatisfied. Going 5-0 in the CBI is also a nice way to end a season, and fans get to see additional games. I agree that CBI wins aren't the same as NCAA wins, but they are wins, and usually over good teams, not 320+ RPI teams like IUPUI. So I don't understand the mentality of ridiculing when your team actually wins games against good opponents, and calling 21 and 22-win seasons "mediocre". Sure, I'd prefer an NCAA run, but winning 20+ games against good teams will always trump losing seasons, and NCSOS's like we've seen the past couple years in the 300+ range.
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But, generally speaking, you would surely concede that going 5-0 in the CBI could very easily skew one's W/L record more positive than NCAA bubble teams that go 0-1, making the W/L records, in essence, invaild if using them for comparisons. Regular season, and more specifically conference record is really the only thing that is relatively standardized.
 
No I don't agree. If you can start "invalidating" wins because of subjective definitions, then we can always argue over the value of any win, or discount just about any winning season.
I would never say any wins over quality opponents are worthless, or not valid. That is the argument detractors use to try to diminish the success of past teams, and to make themselves feel better about these last 3 years of fallout, and I know that isn't what you are trying to do. Wins are wins, IMO.

We could even play that game with the conference seasons... You would surely concede that winning 7 games, like Bradley did last year, against a weakened and watered down MVC with no Creighton, and with 2 of those wins over a bad Loyola team that finished with a nearly 300 RPI is no better than winning 4 or 5 games against a better MVC, pre-Loyola?

And we could easily play that invalidating game with the terrible non-conference schedule we've had the last 2 years. Surely a couple extra wins each year came from scheduling so many cupcakes. So should we discount those wins, too?
 
Da Coach said:
No I don't agree. If you can start "invalidating" wins because of subjective definitions, then we can always argue over the value of any win, or discount just about any winning season.
I would never say any wins over quality opponents are worthless, or not valid. That is the argument detractors use to try to diminish the success of past teams, and to make themselves feel better about these last 3 years of fallout, and I know that isn't what you are trying to do. Wins are wins, IMO.

We could even play that game with the conference seasons... You would surely concede that winning 7 games, like Bradley did last year, against a weakened and watered down MVC with no Creighton, and with 2 of those wins over a bad Loyola team that finished with a nearly 300 RPI is no better than winning 4 or 5 games against a better MVC, pre-Loyola?

And we could easily play that invalidating game with the terrible non-conference schedule we've had the last 2 years. Surely a couple extra wins each year came from scheduling so many cupcakes. So should we discount those wins, too?
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Which just goes to show that you can find a stat that will support any point of view.
 
Quality wins over Austin Peay, Oakland, Pacific, UIC, Florida Gulf Coast, Richmond, East Tennessee State, SEMO, SIUE, and Loyola helped get us to 20 wins in 2009. We missed a chance at another quality win that season when we lost to UMKC. A whopping 1 win out of the 21 that season was against a team in the Pomeroy top 100. We were 1-10 against top 100 Pomeroy teams that season, and lost 5 games to sub-100 teams. How I long for the good old days of unparalleled success we enjoyed back then.
 
Tulsa Brave said:
Quality wins over Austin Peay, Oakland, Pacific, UIC, Florida Gulf Coast, Richmond, East Tennessee State, SEMO, SIUE, and Loyola helped get us to 20 wins in 2009. ....
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Here we go again, just as I predicted. The Jim Les haters want to try anything to detract and diminish from Bradley's past success. If that is how you want to remember that year, or any year, fell free.
But the way I recall, the 2008-09 team won 21 games. The SOS for that 2008-09 team was 90, compared with last year's team that won just 12 games, despite a woeful SOS last year of 191, and a non-conference SOS of 302 (higher than any year under JL).
That team's RPI was 103- last year it was 265, and the average of these last 3 years is over 240.
They also won 5 MVC conference games that season (we have only won 2 in the last 3 years combined, and one of those was at newby Loyola!) including games at Creighton, and at Wichita State, which has not been done since.
Wake me up when we win 20+ games again, or have a SOS under 100, or start winning again against quality teams on the road.
 
Da Coach said:
Here we go again, just as I predicted. The Jim Les haters want to try anything to detract and diminish from Bradley's past success. If that is how you want to remember that year, or any year, fell free.
But the way I recall, the 2008-09 team won 21 games. The SOS for that 2008-09 team was 90, compared with last year's team that won just 12 games, despite a woeful SOS last year of 191, and a non-conference SOS of 302 (higher than any year under JL).
That team's RPI was 103- last year it was 265, and the average of these last 3 years is over 240.
They also won 5 MVC conference games that season (we have only won 2 in the last 3 years combined, and one of those was at newby Loyola!) including games at Creighton, and at Wichita State, which has not been done since.
Wake me up when we win 20+ games again, or have a SOS under 100, or start winning again against quality teams on the road.
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Who said I hated Jim Les? I was not satisfied with that 1-10 top 100 record and the loss to UMKC. Obviously some were perfectly content with those kinds of results. I haven't been satisfied since then either. We also did not beat Creighton that year home or away. We nipped a pretty poor Wichita team by 2 at their place though. The Shockers really started to turn things around the following year. I expect the same thing to happen with the Braves shortly.
 
Tulsa Brave said:
Who said I hated Jim Les? I was not satisfied with that 1-10 top 100 record and the loss to UMKC. Obviously some were perfectly content with those kinds of results. I haven't been satisfied since then either. We also did not beat Creighton that year home or away. We nipped a pretty poor Wichita team by 2 at their place though. The Shockers really started to turn things around the following year. I expect the same thing to happen with the Braves shortly.
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Excuse me for the mistake about Creighton, but we did beat Wichita State twice. But we had 2 wins over top 100 teams (ISU and Evansville), equal to the total such wins in the last 3 years combined. They also had 13 wins over teams with RPI under 200, while last year we had just 3.
If you weren't satisfied with a 21 win season, and an RPI of 103, these last 3 seasons must have been agonizing for you.
 
Da Coach said:
Excuse me for the mistake about Creighton, but we did beat Wichita State twice. But we had 2 wins over top 100 teams (ISU and Evansville), equal to the total such wins in the last 3 years combined. They also had 13 wins over teams with RPI under 200, while last year we had just 3.
If you weren't satisfied with a 21 win season, and an RPI of 103, these last 3 seasons must have been agonizing for you.
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Most of this century has been agonizing, save for about a 6 week stretch in 2006.
 
But we have gone from competitive to bad to worse to near-laughingstock and ............

if you want to throw out ALL the subjective - then we still have overwhelming evidence
of our recent futility over the past 5-6 years since the house-cleaning began with the firing of KK
and the subsequent dismissal of numerous other coaches, assistants and department personnel.

the empty arena, the historically low attendances, lack of anything resembling a sellout, the sheer volume of enormous blowout losses even at home,
the bad RPI and terrible SOS, the unparalleled streak of Thursday night appearances, the huge decline of Athletic Dept. revenues
matched with the disturbing increase in Athletic Dept. costs & spending that is creating substantial turmoil on campus...
and I could go on but suffice to say that those who wanted the housecleaning and the fans hated the 4th place finishes and the NCAA & NIT appearances must be really happy now...
but a tremendous number of long time, strongly supportive fans are gone forever. Fact.

Here's where we were just 5-6 years ago - record attendance and record revenues- LINK - LINK - LINK - LINK - LINK
Now it's home crowds of 5-6000 with plenty of empties, ISU game with almost 5000 empty seats, record low revenues and red ink, coaching positions that we even have a hard time getting qualified candidates to apply for, not to mention the Thursdays, 20-30-40 pt blowout losses - more in the past three seasons than in the prior 2 decades combined, record player & personnel turnover and revolving door, etc. (even more "issues" and suspensions this past 3 seasons than in the prior decade combined) - sure there are some bright spots and light at the end of the tunnel - and a great base of rabid fans are still here despite the losses - but all this fallout is a result of a housecleaning that hasn't paid off yet. Hopefully some day it will...
 
that season 08-09, the total home attendance was 164,000 and was 182,400 the year before, and over 165,000 the year before that (and not many empties)!
It was 118,000 last year and 112,000 (with plenty of empties) this year...
 
Da Coach said:
Here we go again, just as I predicted. The Jim Les haters want to try anything to detract and diminish from Bradley's past success. If that is how you want to remember that year, or any year, fell free.
But the way I recall, the 2008-09 team won 21 games. The SOS for that 2008-09 team was 90, compared with last year's team that won just 12 games, despite a woeful SOS last year of 191, and a non-conference SOS of 302 (higher than any year under JL).
That team's RPI was 103- last year it was 265, and the average of these last 3 years is over 240.
They also won 5 MVC conference games that season (we have only won 2 in the last 3 years combined, and one of those was at newby Loyola!) including games at Creighton, and at Wichita State, which has not been done since.
Wake me up when we win 20+ games again, or have a SOS under 100, or start winning again against quality teams on the road.
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DC , I'd think you'd get tired of lumping everyone together as JL haters. I've never been a JL hater but It was time for him to go. If in your mind that makes me a JL hater than I guess it is what it is but it is far from the truth. Jim was always very respectful to me, as I was to him. It was painfully clear to many that coaching experience should have been a must in selecting a coach when Mo was let go. Just for the record , I also was friends with Coach Mo and was sadden to see him go but in reality it was probably time for him to go too. The worst part about his departure was the timing. One of the best recruiting classes we've had in a long time. What few of us regular posters left on here will never change your mind as you will NEVER change ours. Am I happy with the last 3 years, of course not but, now that GF has all his own recruits with the exception of one ,we'll need to see some major improvement. I think we will but time will tell real soon. Hope the clock isn't ticking but it probably is. Winning will change everything including putting butts in the seats.
 
Just because we've been pathetic the last 3 years (and don't kid yourself, it's been pathetic) doesn't mean that 2008 and 2009 were the golden years or anything like it. Those were not good years. They weren't bad, either of course. They were mediocre.

Those were 20 win seasons. They were mediocre. You just can't ignore the context.

2006: 22 wins
2007: 22 wins
2008: 21 wins
2009: 21 wins

There is no one who can argue with a straight face that '08 and '09 were juuuust behind '06 and '07 in terms of quality.

Anything that happened in the CBI and CIT was nice, but irrelevant in the big scheme. However, that said, people who think we were some awful team that was doomed after '07 is exaggerating too. It's not like we immediately became awful. Now '10 and '11, that's when we were awful. That's when the real fallout happened.

In the end, both sides need to shut up about the 20 win seasons in '08 and '09. Both sides want to use it to validate their side of the argument when the tournaments themselves were empty in value itself.
 
They were winning seasons. I never claimed they were on par with the 2006 season, or equal to Duke or North Carolina-type success. They drew fans and set records for financial support. That is undeniable, it's right there on Bradley's own website-
http://www.bradleybraves.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=3400&ATCLID=187398
http://www.bradleybraves.com/ViewAr..._ID=3400&ATCLID=1597812&SPID=1510&SPSID=19447

If you want to recall those years as mediocre, that's fine. That is anyone's priviledge. But they were winning seasons, over 20 wins, and RPI's that fans would die for these last 3 years.
Like most fans, I enjoyed those years a heck of a lot more than these last 3. If it was time for a change, then so be it. But revisionists who want us to think we are better off now aren't fooling anyone.

If you want objective facts, here they are, as recently as 2010, Bradley's RPI had been better than 110 for 5 straight seasons- That is respectable. It is in the upper 1/3 of all D1 schools, and the top 25% of all Midmajors.
IMO, that is not mediocre, but you can make that judgement for yourself.
Season...RPI
2004- 166
2005- 142
2006- 39
2007- 38
2008- 107
2009- 103
2010- 101
2011- 227
2012- 266
2013- 191
2014- 265

Where we have languished since the overhaul is in the lower 30% of all D1 schools, and couple that with huge drops in attendance, drops in season tickets sold, and drops in donations, and most people would see that as a failure.
I want to see success as much as anyone, and I believe the 2014 recruiting class is a good start finally, but facts are facts. Prior to the change Bradley was a respectable, flourishing program, not a laughingstock.
 
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