Bradley men’s basketball ended its preseason with a disappointing 53-48 loss to Southern Illinois (Edwardsville). The Braves struggled to execute their offense, with possessions often ending in turnovers due to mental mistakes, weak passes, and sloppy ball-handling. Bradley generally played solid first-chance defense but was dominated on the defensive glass, leading to 12 second-chance points for the Cougars.
It’s only one game, and that didn’t count, but parts of the game could be concerning if it continues.
Below, Co-editor-in-chief Latif Love and Sports co-editor Ethan Diamond share five takeaways from the Braves’ defeat.
Size doesn’t equal wins
Head coach Brian Wardle loves his small guards, and they’ve been key to his most competitive teams, but this offseason he made a point of adding size and length to the roster. Bradley’s starting five stood at an average of 6’7.5 on Wednesday night, but that comes with benefits and drawbacks.
SIUE, a much smaller team, made up for the lack of size with speed and quickness. Six-foot point guard Gianni Cobb was hard for the Braves’ defenders to stay in front of when he drove to the rim or utilized pick-and-rolls to hoist three-point looks. Because of their speed, the Cougars swarmed Bradley, recovered quickly on closeouts and stole the ball in passing lanes.
One benefit of that size up and down the lineup should be more presence on the glass, but the Cougars were scrappier, scratching and clawing their way to 15 offensive rebounds and finishing +7 in the rebound margin.
For one night at least, they put their hearts over height.
“Size does not mean wins,” Wardle said. “Everyone’s like, ‘oh, we want tall point guards’. Well, my small point guards won a ton of games and championships here at Bradley. And they’re (SIUE) smaller than us. Sometimes smaller guys got bigger hearts and are scrappier and want it more.”
“That was probably the case tonight.”
Lack of experience hurts
A major concern for the Braves heading into the season is their lack of Division I experience. Bradley has one player, Trevon Payton, with over 1,000 minutes at the Division I level, and Timoty van der Knaap is the only player on the roster to have played significant minutes in a conference as strong as the Missouri Valley.
Van der Knaap missed the game as he continues to recover from a foot injury that he suffered in practice last week. Wardle said he is progressing well, but the Braves still have no set return date.
Bradley’s inexperience could hurt when it’s time to face the MVC’s physical defense, execute their offensive and defensive principles, and make decisions down the stretch. As clutch time approached Wednesday night, the Braves fought back a few times to get within striking distance, but a mistake—a missed defensive rebound or a sloppy turnover—was never far away.
“Honestly, I have one player on my roster right now that has played and won big games,” Wardle said. “That’s Timo. Played in and won big games. I can sense that throughout, you know, the summer and the fall. So I’m trying to help them and teach them how to win in practice every day, and we might just have to go through some ups and downs until we figure it out.”
Wardle says the Braves have good pieces who can play better than they did Wednesday night, and he’s seen that in their prior exhibition against Saint Louis, a team with the potential to secure an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
But the Bradley must find consistency.
Turnovers proved to be killer
Last season, Bradley’s offense was one of the nation’s best at protecting the ball. The team ranked 31st in the country in turnovers per game, largely thanks to the steady guard play of Jaquan Johnson, Montana Wheeler and Alex Huibregtse.
Wednesday night was a stark contrast to the team we saw last season, though. The Braves turned the ball over 17 times through bad passes, offensive miscues and sloppy play overall.
Wardle plans to give the offense more freedom this year, rather than the controlled style he ran last season, but the team needs to cut down on turnovers.
“I would like more free-flowing because I felt like we have more skilled guys and can make decisions with the ball,” Wardle said. “Turnovers haven’t been a problem for us in our other two exhibitions, but tonight it was a huge problem.”
While it is just an exhibition, the Braves can’t afford to let their possession issues on Wednesday linger into the start of the regular season.
Roles are still to be determined
Through Bradley’s two exhibition contests against Saint Louis and SIUE, only one change was made to the starting five. Dietrich Richardson, Treyvon Payton, Kyle Grill and Josh Ibukunoluwa started both games, while Noah Williams started on Wednesday instead of Xander Alarie.
However, whether this group will be the five Wardle rolls out to start Monday’s season opener against Monmouth remains to be seen.
Richardson and Grill went 0-for-10 from the field against the Cougars, while the remaining three combined for 18 points and left the Braves bench responsible for the remaining 30.
“I don’t know who’s going to start on Monday night,” Wardle said. “Maybe it’s based on matchups with the bigs or whoever’s playing better at the time. I’d like to see some separation, but it’s very competitive right now.”
A sign that things will be worse, or a wake-up call
Bumpy starts to the season aren’t new for Wardle’s teams. Last season, Bradley suffered an upset loss to the University of Tennessee at Martin and had a competitive game with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Then they finished as the second seed in the MVC and were six points away from defeating the eventual conference champions.
Wardle’s teams usually get better as the season progresses, and by January or February they’re primed for postseason basketball, but, given the opponent, they rarely have had performances as uninspiring as their loss to the Cougars.
If it counted, it would have been just the fourth time Bradley shot under 35% from the field, under 20% from three, under 60% from the free-throw line, and turned the ball over 15 or more times in program history.
Luckily for the Braves, it didn’t count, and the defeat could be a sign of a much worse season than last year, or a wake-up call.
Wardle, at least, seems less concerned than many. When asked whether the exhibition defeat was concerning, he gave a lengthy, illuminating answer.
“It’s wonderful,” he said about the loss. “This game is great. And the reason is, over the last five years, I’d say listening, execution, and the execution of listening and believing have probably gone down each year. Now we have proof. Continue to have proof. Continue to have facts and ammunition for getting your points across as a coach. Now they have to listen.”
“I’m, like, happy because they have to listen if they really want to win.”
