• 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.

Exhibition game Wed., Nov. 1 - Bradley vs. St. Ambrose 7 pm

Burch nets 9 pts in his first 5 min on the floor
Pettigrew scores in the first minute he’s on the floor
looks like starters are all on the bench now with still 12min to go
This is how Coach Wardle played the closed exhibition vs Mizzou, who BEAT the preseason #1 pick in the Big East, Marquette in their other exhibition, and we still stayed within one possession of them

and don’t let anyone who never goes to games, never sees Bradley play, and who’s never been a supported or donor tell you otherwise
 
Final score- Bradley 74 St. Ambrose 61
Team Stats- https://bradleybraves.com/sidearmstats/mbball/team-stats;period=F

Individual stats- https://bradleybraves.com/sidearmstats/mbball/media;team=home

Bradley lead by as much as 25 with about 10 minutes left, but the last 10 minutes were pretty sloppy with different groups, mostly reserves, on the floor.
SAU shot better than Bradley (46% overall, 50% from three), and outrebounded Bradley 38-31.
SAU had 24 turnovers, to 13 for Bradley. Much of that was due to Bradley's active defense.
But BU allowed too many open shots, which SAU made to make the score closer at the end than it should have been.
 
Bradley8792 said:
Is it me or do we lack an inside game.
Click to expand...

We lack an inside game. We are going to miss Reink a lot. Feels like this year is definitely going to be a step back. Trying not to overreact from an exhibition game but not as encouraged tonight as I wanted to be.

Now, there are a lot of talented players in this group. And I think we’ll be playing good basketball late as we always do. But I think the non con is going to be brutal as we learn to play together considering the strength of schedule. Monday at UAB could get ugly.
 
BUfan39 said:
We lack an inside game. We are going to miss Reink a lot. Feels like this year is definitely going to be a step back. Trying not to overreact from an exhibition game but not as encouraged tonight as I wanted to be.

Now, there are a lot of talented players in this group. And I think we’ll be playing good basketball late as we always do. But I think the non con is going to be brutal as we learn to play together considering the strength of schedule. Monday at UAB could get ugly.
Click to expand...

Official box score- https://bradleybraves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/2023-24/saint-ambrose-iowa-/boxscore/21865

Let me try to put a little brighter spin on the game.... Things got a little ragged in the last 10+ minutes, and the final score and statistics suffered. But with a little over 10 minutes left in the game, Bradley lead by 25 points (65-40), they were shooting 50% overall and over 40% from three. They were getting outrebounded, which is hard to understand, but they had only 6 or 7 turnovers compared to nearly 20 for St. Ambrose. But in those final 10 minutes, with a lot of lineup changes, Bradley went cold, there were more turnovers in those final 10 minutes than there were in the first 30 minutes, and St. Ambrose got hot from outside.
Numbers broke down by each half-
Bradley shot 50% in the first half (15-30), and 31% in the 2nd half (9-29).
Bradley was 9-18 from three in the first half, but just 1-10 in the 2nd half.
BU had just 3 turnovers in the first half, and 10 in the 2nd half.
Meanwhile, St. Ambrose was just 1-4 from three in the first half, and 6-10 in the 2nd half.

I attribute much of the disparity between 1st half and 2nd half stats to the substitutions, and the starters not playing together much in the 2nd half. The 5 starters played together for only 4 or 5 minutes of the 2nd half​. Overall, the starters and the top 3 or 4 subs played between 15-21 minutes, most of those minutes in the first half. It appeared to me that though there were some positive things seen by the reserves, the overall offense and defense suffered.
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but IMO, if the starters had all gotten 30 minutes, and the substitutions limited to only the top 3 or 4 reserves, I think we would have seen the much better game we were expecting.
 
Where was Kyle Thomas? I only listened to the second half and don't recall anything mentioned other than DSnell said the entire team played but I didn't see Thomas in the box score.
 
Well as tends to happen in the offseason our depth seems to have been slightly overrated. I don’t think we have to worry about finding major minutes for 12 guys. Probably 9-10 guys play out the gate other than a couple minutes here or there.

I think Hick and Leons will have nice years still, and Deen and Hannah are nice players. Davis is a solid role player and Burch and Atlason seem to have great potential. Outside of that seven I’m not impressed.

Brian’s record with the transfer portal has not been great. Our best players have been freshman or JUCO recruits other than Deen, who is not a star. Davis is solid too. This seemingly subpar performance with transfers may hurt the potential of this year.

In the very early returns on this year’s transfers Thomas already has to sit out for team rules, Ellis has been disappointing so far as I think the initial thought was impact starter, and Pettigrew has not impressed. If our three D1 transfers can’t provide much, that will hurt us not only this year, but we may be in trouble after guys like Leons and Hannah are gone.

I kept saying I thought we needed another point guard and a wing scorer during recruiting and we got neither (at least a true challenge the starter kind of point guard). I thought maybe Ellis was the wing scorer, but I’m not seeing that early yet.

Since last January (Burch was committed earlier), we have landed Meta, Ellis, Pettigrew, Thomas, and Atlason. Outside of Atlason, that group leaves a lot to be desired so far. Meta should have dominated smaller guys like that, but I still think he has potential to be a solid player.

Having said all that, it’s early. Those guys are transfers adjusting to a new situation, and in some cases have dealt with serious injuries. This team can still be good and will probably get better as the year goes. Certainly doesn’t seem like a perfectly formed team initially at least. Drake beat this team in the regular season 124-48 last year for context.

I think the disappointment for me is that I thought maybe this was the year we just played well from the start, but this didn’t make it seem like that’ll be the case. We are still 0-0 right now, so let’s see how it goes. There are plenty of reasons to still be optimistic, but also some concerns have formed early as well. We shall see!
 
Our transfers looked like they had not played competitive games in a long time. Thought our freshman looked good in spurts, Connor has to shoot the ball much better or we will be in trouble as far as winning many games. I still do not like the 3 big guys on the floor at the same time. The defense was fine until the last 10 minutes of the game. Rebounding on the offensive end was non existent. Thomas not playing because he broke a team rule not good for a new player. Lots of room for improvement yet all the talk about our new transfers supposedly being very good was absent last night against a lower level opponent.I definitely expected a lot more from Ellis and Pettigrew.
 
A few thoughts-First the PJstar indicated Thomas did not play due to "a violation of team standards". Not a very good start but I understand he will be available at UAB. Brian did not do the post game press conference but Bargen did-it said Brian was ill. I guess he was physically ill while I was "basketball ill" after that display (which I only heard/did not see). I am going to Birmingham and am a bit worried what I will see.

Brian's standard is Compete Defend Rebound. We didn't really live up to that standard. I am fairly confident we will do ok on Compete and Defend (although that may be blind faith as we did not show it last night) but I am really worried about rebound. The loss of Rienk and Ja'shon is glaring. I just see a big rebounding fall off from Rienk and Ja'shon to Meta and Darius and am concerned that can't be corrected (although Darius did have 6 rebounds in 20 min). Hell we were out rebounded by St Ambrose-32/25. Sounded like Malevy played fine but subpar from both Connor and Darius. I expect those two to fix that. Meta should have destroyed that lineup-should have done better. Emarion is starting to concern me-right now seems like he can defend and won't make a lot of mistakes but seems very limited offensively-hopefully that is an artifact of being off so long and it will come. Duke played OK.

Almar and Burch look positive but will need to work on their defense to get a lot of time on the floor. Almar seems much closer to getting significant playing time. Burch seems like great potential but has to clean up turnovers and fouls in addition to defense. He seems to have the tools and he will get there, but it will take a bit of time.

I really like Christian and he will get quite a bit of time and he can shoot.

Now it was just an exhibition and Brian was substituting more than he will in a "real" game, but they still were not as far along as I had hoped.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top