All season, Bradley men’s basketball has been touted as a second-half team.
In their biggest game of the season, the second-half Braves came out to play.
Bradley routed UIC 74-47 on Friday in the quarterfinals of Arch Madness, outscoring the Flames by 25 in the second period on their way to reaching their fourth semifinal game in six years. The Braves started the half on a 25-4 run, almost outscoring their entire first half in the process.
“There was no magic adjustments,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said. “Sometimes we’ve made some adjustments in games, a lot of games we have, but not this game. It was just more about settling and talking a little bit better, believing and not trying to do too much.”
The third-seeded Braves went into halftime with only a two-point lead on the 11th-seeded Flames, who just came off a double-overtime upset against Southern Illinois less than 24 hours prior. Eleven first-half turnovers, in part thanks to nine UIC steals, led to problems on the Braves’ side and compounded in just a slim margin.
“It may have been as good a half as we’ve played all year defensively,” UIC head coach Luke Yaklich said. “Nine steals against Bradley is really hard to do.”
As much work as Bradley did to score in the first half, they matched it in half the time in the second. A spin and layup from junior Connor Hickman got things going, then a three from senior Duke Deen – who was held scoreless the entire first half – caused a UIC timeout as Bradley was on a 7-0 run.
That run became 16-1 just two minutes later thanks to a couple of Hickman threes and suddenly, everything started coming up Braves.
“I knew I had to kind of pick up my game and then everyone would follow suit,” Hickman, who finished with a team-high 20 points, said. “Those first couple of minutes were critical in kind of igniting the fire for us.”
It looked like things would start to slow down once Deen and graduate forward Malevy Leons went to the bench with three fouls. Unfortunately for UIC, the assault was far from over.
Freshman guard Demarion Burch hit a pull-up jumper, then senior forward Darius Hannah put in a couple buckets to bring the lead to 20. Burch delivered an acrobatic and-one layup for good measure, and the Braves owned a 25-4 second-half margin just eight minutes in.
Burch finished with 10, junior Christian Davis had nine and even senior Connor Linke got in on the action, proving that Bradley’s bench is ready for Arch Madness.
“I was proud of those guys for stepping up because you need that to win this thing,” Wardle said. “You need your fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth guy to really play to their strengths and be confident and aggressive.”
A lot of the onslaught was due to the Braves’ defense. The second half started with no UIC field goals for 12 minutes, as the Flames shot a season-worst 24.1% from the floor. Their 47 points, along with 13 made field goals, were also season-lows.
And as the third-best 3-point shooting team in the Valley, UIC made their first three of the second half with 1:24 to go, long after the game was out of reach.
“They are as sound a defensive team as we have in the league,” Yaklich said. “They defend the ball at all five positions and when they do have a perceived mismatch, they do an unbelievable job of helping and recovering and then their length, it does affect you at the rim.”
“You start off 0 for 14 and the other team goes 10 for 11, it’s hard to match that,” Yaklich added. “Give credit to Bradley for doing that.”
Bradley’s defense was so dominant, the players didn’t even know about UIC’s field goal drought.
“I was not aware,” Hickman said. “I saw the lead growing but I didn’t know we were that good defensively to start the half.”
As strong as the Braves were in the second half, the first half was not as clean. It took Bradley a while to get their footing in St. Louis, as the Flames were left open for shots and drove past defenders for layups. Five Bradley blocks helped out, but UIC’s activity on the defensive end spelled some problems.
“Turnovers were killing us offensively,” Wardle said. “ [We were] trying to do too much at times and I thought we really settled in at halftime.”
The slow start could be blamed on some Arch Madness nerves, but Wardle doesn’t think so.
“I always say that these student-athletes aren’t nervous for these games. These guys train all year, they’ve played in big games, they’ve played in front of huge crowds. It’s more [that] they’re really excited,” Wardle said. “You gotta let your excitement and everything kind of calm down a little bit.”
Bradley didn’t slack on the glass, however. They outrebounded the Flames 47-28, a season-high number of boards, with Leons’ 12 leading the way. They also didn’t slack from three, of which Hickman matched a career-high with six.
Once halftime hit, Wardle’s message was clear, and the Braves didn’t look back.
“The message was, be the best version of yourself,” Wardle said. “This is just basketball, go play.”
Following 18 and 12-point wins against UIC earlier in the year, Bradley got a clean sweep against their in-state foe. Now, they get their short-awaited rematch against Drake.
The Bulldogs bested the Braves twice this season, but that’s not the revenge the team is seeking. They want to get Drake back for last year’s Arch Madness, the game they lost 77-51 just one step away from the NCAA Tournament.
“It wasn’t a good feeling, and that’s something that we gotta remember,” Hannah said. “We gotta play with a chip on our shoulder and be the best version of us that we can be.”
The semifinal matchup tips off at 5 p.m. today, and the Braves hope they don’t meet the same fate as last season.
“We gotta remember all the hard work we put in over the year to come back to this moment and just put it all out there tomorrow,” Leons said.
