First Semester Grade - Bryant Bulldogs: C-/D+
Thursday, December 15, 2011
This is it! Our fourth and final first semester recap and grade for our local D-1 hoops programs. Today, we check in with the Bryant Bulldogs:
Bryant Bulldogs: C-/D+
Like URI, Bryant has completed its first 10 games of the season with a disappointing (1-9) record with their only win coming over a 1-win UCal-Davis team. However, unlike URI, the Bulldogs weren’t expected to compete with the likes of San Diego State, Notre Dame or Providence.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe disappointing part for Tim O’Shea and Bryant is that, in year four of his tenure, they still couldn’t manage to beat the likes of Ivy League bottom feeder Dartmouth whom they lost to in Hanover, NH last month.
After a one win season two years ago, Bryant took a nice step forward last season by going (9-21) including (7-11) in the Northeast Conference. Right now, it doesn’t appear as if the Bulldogs are prepared to build on that in 2011-2012.
While the program did lose the talent and toughness of Cecil Gresham to graduation, they did return some very talented players in junior Frankie Dobbs and sophomore Alex Francis. Both Dobbs and Francis are playing well as is sophomore Corey Maynard, but there is a significant drop off after that.
The Bulldogs biggest problem appears to be on the defensive end of the floor where they are allowing opponents to shoot 48% from the field and giving up 77 points per game.
They are off to an (0-2) start in conference play with losses at Quinnipiac and at home to Central Connecticut which thumped the Bulldogs 83-51.
Bryant will not be eligible for postseason play following this season but will be starting next year. This is the program’s 4th season competing at the Division-1 level and O’Shea now has 3 classes of Division-1 recruits so there is an expectation that things should be on the upswing sometime soon.
Bryant’s performance at the Dunk against Providence College last weekend may have been a glimpse of what is to come from this team. The Bulldogs led the Friars for most of the game until PC took over in the game’s final four minutes thanks to some solid play and some help from the officials.
O’Shea has demonstrated that he is not afraid to take on a tough non-conference schedule as his team still has games against Boston College and Arizona on tap. That’s great, but it if you’re going to play and likely lose those types of games, you had better take care of business against some of the like-level teams on your schedule which has not happened to date this season.
This is a young basketball team with not a single senior on the roster which is why their grade isn’t lower than it is. Will they go on a nice run once they get back into conference play like they did last season? Who knows?
Because of their youth, the Bulldogs get a bit of a pass this season. Next year, there will be no excuses.