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Defense fails as Bradley drops into last place

A 80-70 loss to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Saturday officially dropped the Bradley men’s basketball into a last place tie in Missouri Valley Conference play.

Drake (6-16), whose win over Bradley (3-20) was its first MVC win of the season, duplicates Bradley’s 1-9 conference record entering the second half of conference play.

Although the Braves enjoyed offensive success Saturday as four players got into double figure point totals, the team left its defense in Peoria, as Drake relished in notching a .46 field goal percentage for the game.

“We were very poor defensively for about 30 out of the 40 minutes,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said. “We got into a shootout in the first half, which I said we cannot do.”

While Bradley scored 70 points for the second time this season, they weren’t able to keep the offensively-apt Drake at bay, who scored 80 points for the fifth time this season.

“[Drake is] an offensive minded team, they’re a very good, skilled offensive team,” Wardle said. “We lost focus in the last 15 minutes of the half.”

Donte Thomas, Antoine Pittman, Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye and Luuk van Bree all scored in double figures with 11, 17, 12 and 13 points, respectively, but were outdone by Drake’s Reed Timmer, Graham Woodward and Kale Abrahamson, who scored 55 of Drake’s 80 points.

However, defense wasn’t the only problem for the Braves as they found themselves in foul trouble throughout the game.

“We had 30 fouls today, [and] we had 15 last game,” Wardle said. “It’s just something we’ve got to deal with, we’ve got to adjust.”

Lautier-Ogunleye and Pittman both fouled out of the game while three other Braves had four fouls, but Wardle said he liked how his team played defense in the lane against Drake.

“I thought our guys did a pretty good job of walling up and being vertical,” Wardle said. “We needed to drive the ball more into gaps, they were just literally putting their shoulder down and driving into us. That’s how they got to the foul line.”

Even though foul trouble provided adversity for Bradley, Wardle attributed his frustration again in the defense and how the Braves rebounded.

“I’m just frustrated defensively,” Wardle said. “I was holding guys accountable in the game who did not rebound, and we started going in the last five minutes.”

Bradley remains on the road, as they travel to Springfield, Missouri on Feb. 2 to take on the Missouri State Bears at 8 p.m.

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