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Men’s Basketball drops heartbreaker

Junior Jojo McGlaston led the Braves with 15 points against Northern Iowa Wednesday. photo by Justin Limoges
Junior Jojo McGlaston led the Braves with 15 points against Northern Iowa Wednesday.
photo by Justin Limoges

Nine seconds remained on the game clock Wednesday night when Northern Iowa forward Bennett Koch missed the second of two free-throws, giving Bradley a chance to send the game into overtime.

Braves freshman guard Darrell Brown got a clean look at a game-tying three, but it clanked off the rim, sending Bradley back to Peoria brokenhearted after a 64-61 loss.

“I love the shot [Brown] took,” head coach Brian Wardle said. “We were going to try to run something for him, but they backed off him, and he got a good, clean, NBA look from three. The ball didn’t bounce our way at the end.”

Bradley took a three-point advantage into the locker room, but poor shooting in the second half allowed UNI to regain the lead. The Braves missed all seven of their three-point attempts in the second half, but Wardle said he was pleased his team put together a full 40-minute game on the defensive end.

“We missed some shots in the second half that we were making in the first half,” Wardle said. “We broke down a couple of times defensively, but overall, the competitive spirit has to be there, and you’ve got to be in these games to learn how to win them.”

When the final horn sounded, Bradley simply didn’t make enough winning plays at the end, but Wardle said this loss is one the team can learn from.

“We had it down to a one possession game with two minutes to go until the very end,” Wardle said. “It’s going to hurt, but the lesson learned is 40 minutes, and we can play with anyone. We know that these guys know that, it’s just a process of getting them to be able to consistently do it.”

The Braves proved it’s difficult to hang with the top team in the conference when it takes 11 and a half minutes to hit a shot. Their sluggish start doomed them once again in a 64-50 loss to Illinois State in Normal last Saturday night.

The Braves started the game on their heels after failing to get good looks against the Redbirds 2-3 zone, which was used almost exclusively by ISU due to injury limitations.

“[The zone] threw us off a little bit to be honest to start the game,” Wardle said. “They’re long, and they’re active in their 2-3 [zone], and we were just tentative. We were playing 40 feet from the basket.”

Bradley looked like a different team in the second half as they outscored the Redbirds 35-32 by punching gaps in the zone and getting to the foul line.

“It’s not what you run, it’s just your mentality. It’s your aggressiveness. It’s your heart [and] your competitive spirit, and when we have that, we’re an effective team,” Wardle said. “We showed good spirit in the second half. We competed. Our talk was much better. Our huddles were much better. Everything was better.”

Brown, Bradley’s leading scorer, was a non-factor against ISU as he failed to score in only 21 minutes, his lowest of his career. That left freshman Jayden Hodgson to pick up the slack as he was tasked with leading the offense in the second half.

“I think just the realization of being down by 15-20 [points] coming into the second half, there wasn’t really any pressure to the game as there was in the first half,” Hodgson, who finished with 11 points, said. “We really had nothing to lose. We just laid it all out on the line, and like coach said, we competed better in the second half.”

With this week’s pair of losses, the Braves dropped into a tie for last place in the MVC at 4-11 along with Indiana State. Bradley will host Evansville, who sits just a game ahead of them in the conference standings, at 1 p.m. tomorrow at Carver Arena.

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