Thus far our journey has shown us #10 Creighton,#9 Evansville, #8 Indiana State , #7 Drake, #6 Northern Iowa, #5 Missouri State, and #4 Southern Illinois.
Let's keep moving.
# 3 Bradley
The Digital Scouting Report
Strengths: Great recruiting guide delivers all the content you want in an easy to digest package.
Weaknesses: That package isn't the Bradley Athletics site but a PDF you can thumb through.
Full Scouting Report:Hitting the Bradley home page and you'll notice the right hand side video player set up and ready to showcase live game broadcasts...
after you sign up (at $6.66/month). It's nice to see you'll have access for your family to watch your games online, live but (foreshadowing alert) other schools allow you to watch this content for free. I think schools need to reduce the barriers to following...
This is also available under the Media menu, shown below. It's here that Bradley also introduces us to Inside Bradley Athletics, their weekly TV program.
This video content is free. When I came to the landing page below, I assumed they had stopped this program last spring (as the latest show looks like it is last April)...
... But I clicked in anyway and realized that it not only is ongoing, but there's a great mix of TV content and audio highlights of games, including games as recent as a day or two ago. It's good stuff, though it covers all sports and doesn't allow you to subscribe for basketball content only.
In search of that hoops content, I moved on to the basketball page, here. (though I did a double take as that large NASCAR image through me off for a minute!)
I did a little exploring. I came across the player bio pages that everyone has, and saw this twist on the Bradley version. It's simple, definitely something everyone can do, but also really a nice touch. You can't help but read these and get a closer feel to the program.
OK, time to move on to the meat of the BU site. In the main navigation of the Hoops section, the following tout appears that changes the dynamic of the site.
It's all here, the end goal and the way to that goal. First, that end goal... BU in the pros doesn't really offer much. It's a list without context of the impact these players made. It's facts without soul. Let's move on...
The recruiting guide, on the other hand, is soul. This is nowhere as tech savvy as the Texas A&M Guide (link here). But that doesn't take away from the fact that this is amazing content. Bradley has a 68-page PDF of what it means to play in the program. I'll include some snapshots below that give you a feel for what this is... (and I love the cover, shown below).
First, they show off their facilities, including the new practice gym and video room. It's nice to see - both because it's advanced and because it shows there is investment in the program.
That investment includes a new space for players to hang on their downtime. Or study. Solid.
I loved this soundbyte on playing here. "Bradley's 10 postseason wins since 2006 are more than twice as many as any other MVC School over the past 4 years." That's powerful. And it's marketing if you consider that those wins include the majority in the CBI or CIT tourneys. But it is positioned well. My only question is if they want to benchmark themselves versus the MVC or if they are better off comparing themselves against those they want to steal recruits from.... (like say Illinois, Indiana, or Missouri)?
Here's those postseason runs... 1 NCAA bid, 1 NIT, 1 CBI, and 1 CIT. But that NCAA run was magical, including a big win over Kansas.
The next two images are a much better visual of Braves in the NBA and Pros!
And, importantly, they hype a high graduation rate.
Two final things they call out are the strength and conditioning philosophy at Bradley...
and the community (Peoria, Illinois) they play in.
The guide itself is informative, deep, and well branded. Where they have opportunities are to leverage their presence on Twitter - drive ways for these recruits to follow the program through the season. (This was done well by Texas A&M)....
If you move to the bottom of the hoops section, you'll come to this - student blogs. This is the 3rd time we've seen student athlete blogs done well. We've seen this done at Texas A&M in season with Donald Sloan (link here). And we've seen it in the offseason with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Let's click in.
As you'll see, there are a nice combination of detailed notes of life in Brazil...
...and photos of the experience. It's a great experience for a student athlete and I'd love to see more of this carried over to the season.
Finally, I'll end this on Coach Les' bio. As you can see below, he makes himself reachable via phone. But, ironically, he doesn't link to his Twitter page. (Nebraska kills it in this space, here!)
As you can see, that's a shame as Coach Les does a strong job on Twitter. He has just shy of 500 followers, here.
And he's really good. check this.... and imagine playing for a coach like this...
"Bring "swag" to NIU-not that we have arrived..but we have proven to ea other-commit to play hard/together/focused on D/reb..wer a good team"
Also on Twitter (and not on the BU site) is Assistant Alvin Brooks, here. He has 639 followers, and is very active and a little quirky. He is constantly online, connecting with fans, other coaches, players, and family. Just seems like a very approachable guy.
Assistant Kyle Vogt is also up, here. With 112 followers, he does a nice job, but hasn't posted much since November. When he does post, he's great - covering the team, practice thoughts, and even the Packers. In short, he seems like a coach you could hang with.
And Bradley Athletics is here, with 185 followers. They cover all sports, with general updates but right now simply look at how they share news and articles on Bradley's Athletics site... I'd love to see them start interacting with what is setting up to be a very active coaching staff.
Now imagine if we could infuse this connection into the hoops site and the recruiting guide!
We're down to our final 2 - Illinois State and Wichita State. Who's it going to be? Stay tuned tomorrow...
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment