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Looking ahead

UNI out-muscled BU the last 2 times we faced them. BU only scored 48 at UNI...St. John's has 47 at half.
UNI looks like a D-3 team matched up against a much bigger and faster Johnnies team.
 
Really not that much to look fw to in the tourney now.
High Point? Really? The last hope for mid majors and it's not even Sat.
Used to be one of the best 4 days of college hoops. Not sure how it will go back to that.
 
One thing we know, the MVC has been gutted. It is on the precipice of going the way of the low-majors. The power 4 is concentrating talent at such a level I fear there will no longer even be such a thing as a "mid-major" conference. It will be 4, 20 team power conferences, the Big East, etc loading their entire rosters with all the available talent and everyone else will essentially be low-majors in the future.
 
It was an embarrassment for UNI and embarrassing for the rest of the Valley...BUT that very well could have been BU getting smashed tonight had we won Arch Madness. Would any other MVC team have done better? Likely not.
 
NIL has and is destroying college sports as we know it. The separation is very apparent. The talent differential very obvious with n Iowa and St Johns as well as BU with Dayton other night . Miami ohio looked like jv team against Tennessee. It's only going to get worse.
 
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I am surprised you guys did not see this coming, before the game began I said St.Johns will bury UNI with their size and physicality .Sorry but it already got worse and the chances of a mid-major advancing to the Sweet 16 are minimal. You have to understand how they seed these teams, They look at the smaller schools weaknesses and match them up with the bigger schools strengths.
The one thing i did notice is the crowds in some of those games were smaller.
 
Bballjunkie said:
NIL has and is destroying college sports as we know it. The separation is very apparent. The talent differential very obvious with n Iowa and St Johns as well as BU with Dayton other night . Miami ohio looked like jv team against Tennessee. It's only going to get worse.
Click to expand...
NIL is a curse to college athletics and especially to basketball. The NIL needs to be changed to put it on a more level playing field. Each school needs to do what it can to fight this. The MVC as a conference also needs to do better. I look at the little things because they add up to big results sometimes. The Conference seems to have taken a step back on publicizing itself. They used to put out pre-season teams . I dont think they did that this year. I blame the Commissioner for that. Good publicity brings good results. Bad publicity does not
 
Watching the NCAA games the last couple days, I saw a lot of commercials with basketball players, men and women. But it seemed half of them featured the Boozer brothers from Duke, who don't really need more NIL money. But, I think putting athletes in commercials distracts from what is being advertised. What good are ads if you recognize the players but don't remember what product or service they were selling?
The other half were mostly unrecognizable players that the advertisers just assumed viewers to knew who they were. Do they expect viewers to run out and buy their product just because Azzi Fudd is in the commercial?
 
yeah - LOL
I hafta believe not even 1 viewer in 100 knows who the heck Azzi Fudd is...

Was watching the SLU/Michigan game-
Noticed that several key players on Michigan are very experienced guys who stayed in college extra years to collect the big NIL money

Their star- Landeborg is a 5th year college player..lured form a mid-major
Gayle & Yschetter are both 4-year guys - one is lured from another school
and Burnett is a 6th year guy.... lured from another school
The rest are 3-year guys - all lured from other schools by big $$
Used to be the big schools relied heavily on recruiting the 4-Star & 5-Star kids out of high school.
Now only one of their guys is a freshman...they're essentially a pro team

Even Saint Louis is built from at least 7 transfer portal guys...
 
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yoda said:
yeah - LOL
I hafta believe not even 1 viewer in 100 knows who the heck Azzi Fudd is...

Was watching the SLU/Michigan game-
Noticed that several key players on Michigan are very experienced guys who stayed in college extra years to collect the big NIL money

Their star- Landeborg is a 5th year college player..lured form a mid-major
Gayle & Yschetter are both 4-year guys - one is lured from another school
and Burnett is a 6th year guy.... lured from another school
The rest are 3-year guys - all lured from other schools by big $$
Used to be the big schools relied heavily on recruiting the 4-Star & 5-Star kids out of high school.
Now only one of their guys is a freshman...they're essentially a pro team

Even Saint Louis is built from at least 7 transfer portal guys...
Click to expand...
This has been normal for a couple years now. There are two strategies for building a title contender. 1) Sign as many 5-star and elite 4-star freshmen players as possible every season (i.e. Duke, was Kentucky under Calipari, etc). 2) Use NIL to sign elite 22-23 yr old talent from middling power teams and mid-majors using the transfer portal and NIL.

If you look the past couple of years, the elite 8 teams and above have utilized one of these strategies or a combination of them to a point. Remember the 2023 Kansas St. run? That was all senior transfer players.
 
Well, when this thread started, we were all hopeful that Bradley would have enough players returning to be competitive again in 2026-27. But it has not worked out that way. Bradley has lost their top 6 scorers (Bully, Alex, Burch, Wheeler, Smith, and Meta) and 8 of their top 9 scorers (also lost Corey Thomas and Kai Yu). The only returning scorer among the top 9, as of now, is Timoty van der Knaap.
Bradley scoring stats- https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/team/stats/_/id/71

So next year's roster looks like this-
Returners- Timoty van der Knaap, Matthew Zobrist, Dietrich Richardson, and possibly Gus Rugaard
Incoming- Race Kowalczyk, Ben Thornbrue, and Noah Williams.

Where would that lineup be picked in the preseason poll?
 
It’s early. More players will join. The only losses that surprised me were Wheeler and Yu. I would have liked them to stay and had hopes for them to improve further over the summer but I don’t see those as earth shattering impacts and I will be surprised if they move to a higher level and play much. Bully hurts and that is a big impact but in todays world I am not surprised-I know they tried to keep him but I can’t blame him for taking a big paycheck somewhere-I wish he had stayed but not “mad” at him for leaving.
 
Add Gustavo in there, he came with some recruiting fanfare, hopefully some potential there.

Add impact transfers and I actually am very optimistic. The thing that team has is size and length. Especially if BW can recruit a 6'2 point guard instead of 5'10.
 
I am hoping we get an update from Coach about the players who decided to return (like we did last year) just so we don't get another unexpected departure.
Jackson (the vocal leader we need), Gustavo, and Timo are the guys I really want to stay...the Peoria guys have potential, but didn’t see much to know last season if they will turn out to be solid Valley players. Just bc they were top IL players doesn't mean they will be studs im college. DR appears to have the goods if he adds 15 lbs in the off-season.
 
Here is a video of Seastrunk and he took it to Montana a couple times.
I like how vocal he is in-game and he is a former 2,000 pt scorer in HS, like Quanny.
www.instagram.com

HOOP 4 LIFE on Instagram: "Jackson Seastrunk 6’5 Guard | Class of 2025 MIC’d Up with Hoop4life 🏀⭐️"

426 likes, 22 comments - hoop4life__ on September 29, 2024: "Jackson Seastrunk 6’5 Guard | Class of 2025 MIC’d Up with Hoop4life 🏀⭐️".
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

As mentioned in another thread, JaShon and Zek were late additions and they turned out pretty good.
Will JS turn out like those 2? Maybe not, but let's not think he WON'T be a factor for BU - he will be a Freshman but with a year in the system. I like his swagger and how he's bonded with teammates. Seems like he's happy with his choice to come to BU, which not only was driven by teammate Montana, but was also influenced by his father.
 
with likely 8 new players next year plus two freshmen who have yet to play and two more who have barely played,
I suspect Bradley will be picked well beyond 5th in the preseason....
And yet, based on what we already see, almost every other MVC team is going to have to rebuild as well.
So, who will be chosen as the frontrunners next year? Will it be ISU even tho this year they failed to live up to that billing?
 
yoda said:
with likely 8 new players next year plus two freshmen who have yet to play and two more who have barely played,
I suspect Bradley will be picked well beyond 5th in the preseason....
And yet, based on what we already see, almost every other MVC team is going to have to rebuild as well.
So, who will be chosen as the frontrunners next year? Will it be ISU even tho this year they failed to live up to that billing?
Click to expand...
ISU, UIC and Valpo because of their returning players. Now at this time we don"t know who may go into the portal a week from Tues. which would change everything.
 
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