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Women’s basketball falls to Sycamores, beats Evansville

Freshman Madison Dellamuth looks to pass the ball to a teammate during Bradley’s win over Evansville on Sunday. Photo by Maggie Cipriano.
Freshman Madison Dellamuth looks to pass the ball to a teammate during Bradley’s win over Evansville on Sunday. Photo by Maggie Cipriano.

For the second weekend in a row, the Bradley women’s basketball team split their weekend games. The Braves fell at home last Friday night to Indiana State, but bounced back two days later to take down Evansville.

The game plan going into Friday’s game was simple: stop Rachel Mahan, and limit turnovers.

Neither of those two things happened for Bradley.

Before the game, head coach Michael Brooks called Mahan a “dominant” post player, and he also knew what move to expect from her. The Braves, however, were unable to stop her.

“In our first game, we did a very good job of forcing her to take tough, contested shots,” Brooks said. “She was able to finish over her right shoulder, finishing with her left hand as much as she wanted. We didn’t do the things in the game plan that were necessary to be successful.”

Mahan finished Friday’s game with 20 points and eight rebounds en route to a 65-55 defeat of the Braves. The Braves also committed 27 turnovers in the loss, which isn’t conducive to winning basketball.

“We didn’t make easy passes; we tried to make hard passes,” Brooks said. “To me, they were trying to make the home run passes instead of making the easy passes, taking what the defense gives you instead of forcing what you want to have happen.”

Regardless, the Braves were competitive throughout the game. The women were only down four at halftime and fought back from multiple Sycamore runs in the second half to cut the lead down to six with 1:30 to go in the game. However, Indiana State went 8-10 from the charity stripe in the closing minutes of the game to seal Bradley’s fate.

On Sunday, the women bounced back with a vengeance. The Braves suffered an 86-46 drubbing at the hands of the Evansville Aces the last time the two teams squared off in January. The game last Sunday was a completely different story.

The Braves proved to be staunch on the defensive end, holding the Missouri Valley Conference leaders in three-point percentage to a measly 16.7 percent clip from behind the arc. Overall, the Aces shot 31.5 percent from the floor.

“We just took it away,” Brooks said. “We stayed on their shooters, we contested every shot. You know, we really tried to pressure them harder than we had in previous games.”

The Braves were up by only two points with a minute to go, but the women were clutch from the free throw line, making all six of their free throws to ice the win, 56-50.

The Braves will play on the road at Missouri State today at 7 p.m.

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