Bradley women’s basketball finished the first two months of the season undefeated at home, defeating Southern Illinois to start conference play.
With a 6-4 record going into the game, including five wins in Peoria, the Braves had an advantage versus a conference opponent.
“Wins are hard, and I love the fact that we got to play a conference game before Christmas,” head coach Kate Popovec-Goss said. “A couple of things we talked about going into this game are everyone’s 0-0 going into the league and we want to be 1-0 coming out. And then the second thing we talked about is really protecting our home court. That’s something that’s super important in college basketball.”
Bradley was able to do both against Southern Illinois, whose 2-7 record is very deceiving.
The taming of the Salukis
The first quarter went the way their previous first quarter against South Dakota did: low-scoring and high defensive output. The Braves shot four-for-12 while the Salukis went two-for-nine, meaning Bradley needed to use a strong transition game to create a 10-7 lead after ten minutes.
The Braves’ only points came from sophomore forward Ellie McDermid, graduate guard-forward Tamia Perryman and sophomore guard Mya Wardle. McDermid and Wardle would go on to finish with 14 points each, combining for 11 rebounds and eight assists, with the former earning Ameren Player of the Game honors.
“We put in so much work this past week,” McDermid said. “We just came to the gym, we worked on what we needed to work on and it shows. We [wanted] to just keep grinding, getting stops, just keep fighting and we know our shots will fall if we play good defense.”
Bradley outscored the Salukis again in the second, leading 26-18 as the halftime buzzer sounded. The Braves started with an 8-2 run in under five minutes, becoming lenient on defense later on, but extending the lead from three to eight between quarters.
Still a low-scoring affair at that point, Coach Pop and the players knew the offensive unit could improve in the second half.
“Right now, we’re really locked in defensively, which I love,” Popovec-Goss said. “I’m a defensive-minded coach, it’s what I talk about, it’s the backbone of what we do, and I think we’re locked into that. We’ve gotten off to slow starts offensively because we’re not really playing with the same intensity that we’re playing with on the defensive end and that’s something we talked about.”
“It was kind of the same message against South Dakota,” she added. “We went into halftime and we challenged them on offense. It wasn’t about making shots or missing shots, it was about executing our offense with pace and intensity and that was the same message going into the second quarter.”
While the Braves scored 17 in the third, the most in any quarter of the game, Southern Illinois outscored them by one. Six minutes of the second half were made up of an 8-0 run from the Salukis and a 10-0 Bradley run which eventually brought the lead back to seven.
“We were getting frustrated because obviously, our shots weren’t falling,” McDermid said. “But when our shots aren’t falling, we have to rely on our defense and so we really came together and were like ‘we need to get stops and our offense will come,’ and that’s what we did. We came together and we got stops and then our offense started rolling in the fourth quarter.”
Southern Illinois failed to play catch-up in the entire fourth quarter, allowing 21 points while scoring only 11 of their own. With a 64-47 win, Bradley continued their three-game streak and moved to 1-0 in the MVC.
Along with McDermid and Wardle, two other Braves scored double-digits: fifth-year guard-forward Kaylen Nelson and freshman guard Maya Foz. Even though neither could grab a bucket in the first half, they finished with 13 and 10 points, respectively.
Coach Pop had a ton to say about her two top performers.
“I was really, really proud of Ellie. I thought she was super steady for us the whole game,” Popovec-Goss said. “I thought she defended amazingly and she played with a lot of confidence on offense tonight. I love the way she got to the rim. She’s a little bit of a mismatch problem because of her length, her size at different positions and her quickness and I thought tonight, she just played with a lot of confidence, especially when we needed it.”
“I think it’s the same with Wardle,” Popovec-Goss added. “I thought [Mya] was very, very confident and steady for us tonight. Her line’s incredible: seven assists to two turnovers, six-for-eight from the field, five rebounds. She and Ellie were young leaders for us and we’re gonna need that, especially with Claire [McDougall]’s injury. We need people to step up in those roles with confidence.”
A hard-fought battle with the Norse
Bradley was then set to play their first away game in 18 days, traveling to Northern Kentucky in their final non-conference game of the season. This starts a four-game road trip that will last into January.
A strong first quarter from both sides kept the game close, as the Braves finished the frame with a 20-16 lead. Both Nelson and McDermid started hot, scoring eight and six points, respectively, with Foz, Perryman and freshman forward Kali Fortson combining for six.
The Norse weren’t on the wrong side of the scoresheet the next quarter as they made a 9-0 run into a two-point lead. Despite the Braves keeping pace, the halftime score was 35-32 in favor of Northern Kentucky.
The third quarter was a similar story. The Norse went on an 8-0 run that started just before the end of the first half, but instead of Northern Kentucky barely dominating, it was Bradley. The Braves slowly made their way back to form, and with an impressive seven-point quarter from Perryman, Bradley regained a slim 52-51 lead.
Buckets were hard to come by in the fourth, but after giving up five straight points, Bradley tied it up 56-56 with eight minutes left and was up by four halfway through.
The problem for the Braves was free throws. Bradley went four-for-12 from the line while the Norse made 11 out of their 16, which allowed them to stay close for the final few ticks. A layup by senior Amy O’Hara, who just returned from injury, was followed up by an NKU basket and a ton of missed opportunities to take the lead.
In the end, Bradley were the victors, picking up their closest win of the season 62-61. The team will now take an extended break for the holiday season before their next game against Belmont on Jan. 2, but they know what is required when they return to improve their already impressive play in 2026.
“We really have to focus on ourselves and know that we can do what we can do and control the controllables,” McDermid said. “Playing on the road is really hard, so just sticking to what we know and what we do is really important.”
The coaching staff also appears to have the same mindset for this stretch of games.
“We’ve got to go find ways to chip away on the road,” Popovec-Goss said. “It start[ed] with Northern Kentucky. Their record, similarly to Southern, is very deceptive of what they’re actually capable of. So we just have to take it one game at a time.”
“And then welcome to the throes of conference [play],” Popovec-Goss continued. “You are going to go play on the road for big stretches; that’s just how this works and we’ve got to learn what that looks like. It’s a process for us and really the thing I’m continuing to look for is this team growing and getting better every day and I think that we are.”
