Basketball is a game of runs, and Bradley’s 68-50 loss to Northern Iowa Wednesday epitomized that.
Trailing by 12 points late in the first half, Bradley took a one-point lead on freshman guard Antoine Pittman’s 3-pointer with 17:25 left in the game.
That three capped off a 17-7 Bradley run, which stretched back into the first half when sophomore Donte Thomas sunk a pair of free throws with 4:31 left in the first.
But that lead was short lived.
UNI guard Jeremy Morgan hit a three in response, a mere 21 seconds after Pittman’s go-ahead three.
From that Morgan 3-pointer, the Panthers went on a 28-12 run to end the game, winning 68-50 behind a game-high 28 points from Panther guard Paul Jesperson.
Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said he attributes the disasterous second half to a lack of focus from the young Braves.
“Everything we wanted to do we did not do in the second half,” Wardle said. “We wanted to relax after we got that lead and made some shots, and we’re not an offensive team this year.”
UNI came into Carver Arena Wednesday night as losers of four consecutive games and in an offensive slump. Jesperson single-handedly cured their offensive woes, tying a UNI school record with eight threes.
“They’re a good shooting team, we all know that, and they broke out against us,” Wardle said. “But we let them, I’ll be quite honest. We gave them open looks, and that’s what can happen.”
Although the Braves were outscored in the second half 33-18, the first half was much more competitive and showed signs of an improving team.
Wardle’s team shot 45 percent from the floor in the first half, which is lightyears better than the 33 percent the team has averaged the entire year.
However, Wardle said the wrong mentality set in from the team making a good percent of its shots in the first half.
“We’re not going to beat people with our offense, and I think we got that mentality a little bit that, ‘Oh, the ball’s going in for us, so let’s try and outscore somebody today,’” Wardle said. “We haven’t done that all year, and all we did was talk about defense, defense, defense going into this game.”
Considering the Braves’ offensive struggles this season, Wardle said he had no explaination for why the offense was so consistent in the first half.
“I can’t even tell you the answer, to be quite honest,” Wardle said. “We were ready to shoot, that’s something we’ve been working hard on the last six weeks. We’ve been stepping into our shots. We have flashes where we look like we’re really figuring it out.”
Pittman, who was an offensive boon for the Braves, shot 4-6 from beyond the arc and ended the game with 14 points, right behind fellow freshman Ronnie Suggs who led all Braves with 15.
“[Pittman] was ready to shoot,” Wardle said. “He stepped, one-two into his shot and that’s why they all went in.”
Although Wardle analyzed his guard’s offense with a technical approach, Pittman said his offensive output resulted from the game’s intangibles.
“[I was] just trusting that things are going to work out,” Pittman said. “[I’m] just continuing to keep playing and having faith in my teammates.”
Despite the Braves losing to the Panthers for the 17th time in the last 20 meetings, UNI head coach Ben Jacobson lauded Bradley’s efforts against his team.
“I thought they played very hard the first time we saw them, but there is a little different confidence level about them,” Jacobson said. “The thing in both games and [when] watching them play that I’ve been impressed with is how hard they’ve played and how they’ve continued to really stay together.”
The Braves will go on the road Saturday as they take on Drake University 2 p.m. in Des Moines, Iowa.
