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This week

LittleBrave said:
I think we should reevaluate what goals to have as fans for a season in this new era.

After this season, big whoop if you make the Big Dance if you're just gonna fall flat on your face like UNI. That made winning Arch Madness not such a big deal in my mind. I mean really - UNI didn't have a very good season and they underachieved despite a long weekend in early March. Maybe I don't have the same lens as most, and I'm fine with that! Would rather have ended the season doing what ISU-red did (making NIT Final 4) than what UNI did (win Arch Madness but get poached in the Big Dance).

I feel differently and can't explain why. I just don't personally think making the NCAA tourney anymore is that much bigger than other goals, as it's contingent as a mid major to win 3 straight games. There's just so much more that makes a season a great one. Plus the tourney and system is now set up to minimize upsets of mid majors and keep the big name schools alive. It was different when mid majors had a legit shot to win and advance to the Sweet 16.

With the challenges BU is faced, I think winning 20+ games and making a run in St. Lou is darn good. We did that last season - may be tougher to do it again next season.

What I also want is to get guys who are committed to staying for at least 2 seasons, which JaQuan did. As much as we didn't want or think he should go, he gave us the most of his 2 seasons.
Sucks to have Kai Yu and Wheeler depart after only giving 1 season. But it's hard to entice these kids to stay even with the culture that Wardle has built.
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I’d like to see the NCAA and conferences do away with post season conference tournaments. Instead of post season conference tournaments, use that week to open the so called “Big Dance” up to all teams, similar to what high school basketball does. They could even go to separate tournaments for the Power conferences and mid majors. Not only has college basketball gone the way of the NBA with the payment structure, they’ve also made the regular season meaningless as has happened with the NBA season. Mid majors schools can now have an outstanding regular season but have one bad game in the post season conference tournament and the season is for nothing. Does anybody know if Bradley or any other MVC teams receive money for the post season tournament or do all the proceeds to to the MVC office? The MVC and Bradley have never been forward thinking. In the late 1970s, when football became king and the league began losing teams, there were multiple meetings set up among Midwest schools to form a new conference. Those multiple meetings included DePaul, Loyola, Bradley, Butler, St.Louis, Creighton, Dayton, Drake and Marquette. Bradley and Drake stayed with the MVC. The others went on to form or join new conferences.
 
Bball31 said:
I’d like to see the NCAA and conferences do away with post season conference tournaments. Instead of post season conference tournaments, use that week to open the so called “Big Dance” up to all teams, similar to what high school basketball does.....
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That proposal has been suggested before, and I would like to see that. It would result in a lot of blowouts, but also some interesting and exciting upsets. And, a lot more money would go to the low and mid-major conferences. But it will never happen. The power conference teams will never allow it. No matter how strongly the power conference teams would be favored to win, there will always be a few that would get upset by low-majors and mid-majors, thus "stealing" slots that they feel are rightfully theirs.
If the big boys had their way, they would eliminate all automatic bids, and exclude any teams that aren't from the power conferences, or who don't have Top 40-50 NET ranking.
 
Da Coach said:
That proposal has been suggested before, and I would like to see that. It would result in a lot of blowouts, but also some interesting and exciting upsets. And, a lot more money would go to the low and mid-major conferences. But it will never happen. The power conference teams will never allow it. No matter how strongly the power conference teams would be favored to win, there will always be a few that would get upset by low-majors and mid-majors, thus "stealing" slots that they feel are rightfully theirs.
If the big boys had their way, they would eliminate all automatic bids, and exclude any teams that aren't from the power conferences, or who don't have Top 40-50 NET ranking.
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I agree. The history of this power shift relates to Notre Dame football getting to retain all the money on their TV contract years ago and not sharing money in a conference. For all other sports for Notre Dame, they play in a conference. Then the Power 5 conferences started the playoffs without the NCAA and changed the traditional post season bowl games. Now the college football season has been extended to February and the Big Ten and SEC rule. NCAA has no power
 
Called the lull before the flurry of news of commitments. Lol. Just my take. But yes I thought we would have heard something by now.
 
tomahawk chop said:
Pretty quiet so far, would have thought we would get at least 2 commits by this weekend.
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For anyone concerned that we haven't heard of any Bradley commitments from the transfer portal yet, maybe this will reassure...
The total number of transfers that have committed to all 11 MVC teams combined, so far, is TWO.
Neither one of them is a Division I transfer. And there have been none since April 1.

Transfers from other 4-year schools signed by MVC teams, so far-
Indiana State got a commitment on April 1, 2026 from- 6’4” junior guard E.J. McQuillan of NAIA Louisiana State University of Alexandria (averaged 20.4 ppg, 38% from three).
Valparaiso got a commitment on March 17, 2026 from- 6’3” junior guard Dylan Moles of D2 Marian University (averaged 11.4 ppg, 1.3 apg, 27% from three).

That's all; only 2 low-level non-D1 transfers, and only one in the last 2+ weeks.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
 
Yep, MVC signings will come at the end of period as the Power Conference team rosters have already filled up. Then it will be a mad grab to try and take the leftovers that are getting desperate to land somewhere before their stock drops even farther.
 
Bradley landing Trevon Payton is a surprise and a sign the Bradley coaches can still do the job recruiting. IMO, Payton is clearly a far superior recruit than any other MVC team has landed from the portal, and the only proven D1 player, so far.
Kudos to the entire coaching staff. Hard work pays off!
 
I'm hearing from a source that Trevon Payton was the only visitor to Bradley this weekend. So it seems the chances of getting another commitment from a portal transfer this weekend is not so likely. But they will be more commitments coming.

By the way, portal news like Trevon Payton's commitment last night, generate a lot of interest among Bradley fans. Below is a graph of Bradleyfans.com's traffic over the last 30 days. As can be seen, the traffic started to drop off after the season came to an end with the NIT loss on March 18. But it spiked on March 23 with the Montana Wheeler news and again on March 25 with the news that Demarion Burch entered the portal. Then another big spike occurred March 27 with the news about Jaquan Johnson. But the traffic (and ad revenue) has risen steadily the last few days with the transfer portal opening on April 7, and continues to surge with yesterday's commitment by Trevon Payton. Maybe I owe Trevon a cut of the massive ad revenue (just kidding) triggered by his commitment? Wouldn't that be considered NIL?
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Da Coach said:
I am hearing from a source that Trevon Payton was the only visitor this weekend, so we probably won't be hearing of another commitment right away. But with the intense work the coaches are putting in, and all the contacts they've made, there will be more quality recruits coming.
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multiple guys who previously were recruiting targets of Brian Wardle and had offers from Bradley are back available or in the portal.
Hafta think at least a couple of them are getting recontacted...
(this is just a partial list, I am sure there's more...)

These guys are all in the transfer portal-
Mayar Wol
KJ Tenner
Trey Scott
Kingston Whitty
Rolyns and Prince Aligbe
Aleks Alston
Omaha Biliew
Flory Bidunga (I know, already way out of our range)
Brant Byers
Cole Certa
Kennard Davis
Owen Freeman
Tristian Ford
Jac Mani
ISU's Ty Pence
Brody Robinson
Ade Popoola
Miles Rubin (also Wes Rubin)
Anthony Roy
Tucker Tornatta
 
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