As Bradley’s four seniors, Alex Huibregtse, AJ Smith, Ahmet Jonovic and Corey Thomas stood together and watched the clock wind down to zero, they took it all in.
They’d played their last game at Carver Arena.
The group with backgrounds from Georgia to Serbia, embraced each other as the Bradley fans cheered them on for the final time.
7,000-strong chanted, “Let’s go, Braves!” as Bradley finished the regular season with an 87-78 win to clinch the two seed in the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) tournament.
“I mean, it was kind of surreal,” Smith said, grinning ear to ear. “Obviously, being a senior, it’s our last game in Carver. Being out there with the other three seniors was pretty crazy. Everybody’s just chanting, and then we’re winning on our senior night.”
“Not everybody wins on senior night. It was just a great feeling.“
The Braves veterans paid them back for their appreciation and then some, combining for 51 of Bradley’s 87 points.
After the victory, head coach Brian Wardle spoke glowingly about his seniors.
“Alex is just professional,” Wardle said, beaming with pride. “He shows up every day, and he does it by example. AJ is playing his best basketball right now. And that’s what we need from our seniors. Corey Thomas is our vocal leader, our energy guy, our guy who makes us laugh every day, too. And then Meta [Jonovic] is the most durable big man I’ve ever had.”
“Those four guys mean a ton to this program. Even though AJ and Alex have only been here about eight months, they still have put their stamp on this program and will leave it in a better place and leave a little bit of a legacy, too.”
The four had plenty of legacy-building moments in the regular season finale.
Midway through the first half, the Braves had gone cold, going six minutes without a field goal and allowing Murray State to go on a 12-1 run and take an 18-11 lead. The Braves were in danger of getting lapped by the Racers when Smith checked in off the bench, knocked down two threes and slammed in a dunk to get the crowd back into the game.
“It was our defense,” Smith said about what got Bradley back into the game. “I feel like sometimes we let our defense dictate our offense. We’d get a couple of stops in a row, then we’d just score on the other end, which was kind of firing everything up. Then people started getting hot, and we just kept attacking and running from there.”
One of the people who “got hot” was Huibregtse, who finished the game with 21 points and three assists, none bigger than a deep three to beat the halftime buzzer and give the Braves a 36-35 edge at the break.
“I think that was a huge possession,” Huibregtse recalled about the last possession before halftime. “We kind of knew we were keeping them in the game by, you know, some mistakes we were making were kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. I think that was a huge momentum swing for us.”
Thomas and Jonovic did the dirty work on the inside, combining for 10 rebounds and three blocks and helping limit Murray State to 39 percent inside the arc.
“I challenged our seniors, I think, about a month ago or so,” Wardle remarked. “They have responded tremendously to that. But that’s character. All four guys have such high character. And I say this in the portal and in recruiting, you can miss on talent, we cannot miss on character, and we did not miss at all on any character.”
The seniors shone on their big day, but the game was the perfect encapsulation of the players that the veterans have grown to become and of what the future of Bradley could look like.
Freshmen Dietrich Richardson and Montana Wheeler came off the bench and made plays down the stretch, highlighted by a connection on an alley-oop in transition. Sophomore big man Kai Yu knocked down a three-pointer that got the crowd on their feet and had a highlight dunk in the first half. Sophomore point guard Jaquan Johnson was steady as usual, scoring 16 points, dishing out 3 assists and nabbing three steals.
Without the youngsters, the seniors’ big night could have been spoiled.
“Let me talk about Dietrich Richardson and Kai Yu because I thought their bench play was tremendous,” Wardle said. “Dietrich stepped up big in the moment that we needed those rebounds and a couple of buckets that he gave us. I’m so proud of him. He’s been patient. It’s hard as a freshman coming into college now, and maybe not getting the minutes that you used to get, but he has stayed the course. There have been zero issues.”
“Kai Yu banged in a three and had a big dunk on his birthday,” Wardle continued with a smile. “It’s just fun to see this team’s growth. They’ve come together as the years have gone on, and now we’ve got to see if we can get even better in these next three, four days before we play Friday.”
The Braves’ next stop is St. Louis, where they’ve earned an extra day to rest before going to battle to earn a guaranteed bid to the NCAA tournament.
Five months ago, the feat may have seemed far-fetched for the second-youngest team in the conference, which lost four seniors in the offseason and started the season 1-3.
“If you had told me we’d get the two seed and finish second with this team before the season started, I would have laughed at you,” Wardle joked.
But now with seeding set in stone, the realization of what this team can accomplish has set in.
“I know I’m ready for next week already, to be honest,” Huibregtse said. “That’s where my head’s at. That was a great win for us. A much-needed win. But you know, I’m ready to go for next week.”
“We all want to go dancing in March,” Smith agreed.
