Final score: Bradley 86 Evansville 50

[Da Coach]

MVC Standings

[Da Coach]

Official box score- https://gopurpleaces.com/sports/mens...boxscore/11487

Attendance- 4,093

[Da Coach]

Video of the first basket of the season by Sam Hennessy- https://twitter.com/BradleyUMBB/stat...78274098397637

Sam's only previous basket was in Bradley's 83-48 blowout against Murray State last season.

Video of Connor Linke's first basket of the season- https://twitter.com/BradleyUMBB/stat...77843678839198

[bigjimmy]

A very well rounded game as 6 guys made at least 4 FG's. Burch had another career high with 13 points and was 5-5 from the field. He does need to work on his FT's and he can't let the other team bait him into losing his composure and pick up T's. Our defense played lights out in the 2nd half. Took us about 5:00 into the second half before our first FG then we proceeded to go on a 26-5 7:00 run that was a mixture of great defense, 3 pointers and Kabooms. Too bad a lot of people missed it. People just don't appreciate the program we have. These kids deserve to have Carver rockin. Hopefully we'll be able to take this effort on the road to UIC and SIU.

[Da Coach]

Former Bradley player Antonio Thomas came into last night's game averaging 8.6 ppg. But he had a tough night. He did manage one basket late in the 2nd half for his 2 points, but he had 0 rebounds and 0 assists. He also had 3 personal fouls and 3 turnovers.

[Bradley8792]

Good to see we’re playing much better defense. The games we lost this year it was lacking. Coach always stresses that solid defense will lead to a better offense.

[Tomahawk]

Agree with the statement that says good defense leads to better offense. There is an old saying that I totally agree with that says offense wins games, but good defense wins you championships.

[Da Coach]

Interesting note- The beat writer for the Evansville Aces posted that there was a seat reserved last night at Carver Arena for a scout from the Houston Rockets- https://twitter.com/AMFKristensen/st...29653566996800

Wonder who he was there to scout? Seems most likely it would have been Malevy Leons.

[LittleBrave]

That usually means we win by two in the last seconds, but I'll take it!

Well it sure was a tight nailbiter!!! LOL
Glad we could cruise once again!

[LittleBrave]

Good to see we’re playing much better defense. The games we lost this year it was lacking. Coach always stresses that solid defense will lead to a better offense.

Exactly - the defense, rebounding, and FT shooting were all glaring deficiencies in our rough 5-game losing streak.

[Bradley8792]

I

Wonder who he was there to scout? Seems most likely it would have been Malevy Leons.

Probably heard about the new beer and wanted to get some before it ran out.

But if he was here to see Mal he picked a good game. Very good effort defensively.

[LittleBrave]

Second straight game I thought we really looked crisp.

I would argue that we looked crisp for certain stretches, but for about 10 minutes we played pretty poorly (if there is anything to pick at from a great effort by BU). It seemed like the team was pretty loose and likely didn't feel threatened much by the Aces without Ben.

Love the contributions by 7 or 8 guys, which is a staple of Wardle's successful teams.

I like the way we get open looks for 3 and we have guys who can knock them down this year.
Davis, Atlason, Duke, and Hick.

Malevy needs to find his groove still and Burch seems comfortable from deep, which is nice b/c his defenders tend to sag with his threat to weave and drive to the hoop.

The top Valley teams almost always shoot well from 3-point land - it's just the way the game is now - especially with top mid-major programs, and we saw the last few games of postseason how our struggles from deep hurt us.

[Tommy]

Interesting note- The beat writer for the Evansville Aces posted that there was a seat reserved last night at Carver Arena for a scout from the Houston Rockets- https://twitter.com/AMFKristensen/st...29653566996800

Wonder who he was there to scout? Seems most likely it would have been Malevy Leons.

My sources tell me they were scouting Cade Hardtke.

[battlebasset]

Well it sure was a tight nailbiter!!! LOL
Glad we could cruise once again!

No one is happier than me to be wrong considering the result. My only thought during the game was "Wouldn't it be nice to be able to bank some of those points for a later game?" Sort of like rollover minutes!

Hope we can do something like that to the redbirds when we play them at Carver!

[tomahawk chop]

Leons was really impressive on defense, not sure how many passes he deflected last night but it was a huge number. The steals led to our offense getting better shots.We had 8 different players making 3 point shots last night including Hardke and Hennessy. Nice to see our walkons that put in a lot of work get rewarded and make the stat sheet. Celebrate the win, get back to business and go up to Chicago and beat UIC.