Bad news for the Braves today as team leader and tough as nails fan favorite senior guard Sam Maniscalco will miss the rest of the season with a bad ankle that's been bothering him since surgery performed over the summer break. Combined with the earlier loss of Taylor Brown the Braves have now lost two of their three best players. For me this means all preseason expectations are kind of shot. The Braves are left with ten players active, with one (freshman big Andrew Davis) still appearing to be a redshirt candidate.
So far, Coach Les has been playing lots of 4-guard alignments as he hasn't appeared confident in any of his bigs. That seems all but impossible as the Braves only have five guards active now. The bigs and sophomore PG Dyricus Simms-Edwards are going to have to grow up quick. I'm mostly interested in seeing Bradley focus on working through the development of an inside game and a good gutsy effort from the team for the rest of the season. Anything over .500 would be a great success, I think... And yajusneverknow, sometimes when a team has to sink or swim, they find out they can swim.
Tonight's game is against Southern Conference member Western Carolina Catamounts (or Catamites as we took to calling them) who beat Bradley in Peoria last season. They had a quality team with good seniors and caught us on an off night. They are 3-4 and are not expected to be a tough team. No way to predict how the Braves will handle the loss of their spiritual leader and related/necessary shift in team philosophy. GO BRAVES.
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