If you thought Bradley’s 86-60 win over Missouri State on Saturday felt like déjà vu, you wouldn’t be far off.
Coming off an 86-61 dismantling of Valparaiso, the Braves (10-5, 2-2 MVC) took care of business against the Bears (9-6, 1-3 MVC) to pick up their fourth straight win, and Connor Hickman was once again the star of the show. The junior guard followed up his 28-point performance versus the Beacons with a 25-point effort on Saturday while matching his career-high six threes set in the last game.
A similar performance led to similar results for the Braves as they walked out of Carver Arena with their largest margin of victory this season.
“Just a total team effort, from every player on our team to the crowd,” head coach Brian Wardle said. “We’ll enjoy it tonight [but] I told the team I’m coming into the office tomorrow like we lost so be ready.”
Hickman led the Braves in points while shooting 50% from the field and grabbing six rebounds. Since his return from injury against Truman State, he’s averaging 18.3 points per game and Bradley is 9-2 when he is in the lineup. Hickman also earned Player of the Week honors from the Valley after his back-to-back 20-point showings.
“Feels like it’s going in everytime I shoot it,” Hickman said. “Just sitting out for four weeks, I mean I just missed it. I miss playing so it just feels great to be out there.”
Bradley also got good contributions from senior Darius Hannah, as the forward matched his career-high with 19 points on perfect 8-8 shooting. He set the tone early in the game, locking down the Bears’ Donovan Clay on defense and receiving a feed from senior Duke Deen for a fast-break dunk to put the Braves on top early. Deen followed that up with two fadeaway jumpers to make it 7-4 in favor of the home team.
A quick four points from the Bears kept it close, but once again Hannah was the spark of a 14-2 Bradley run that ended with a Hickman three, his third of the first half. A couple putbacks and a lay-in from Hannah gave the Braves their first six points of the run that brought their lead all the way up to 16 with under eight minutes to play in the half.
Bradley rode that lead into the locker room, as a Hickman steal and floater put the Braves up 42-28 to end the half. Against a Bears team that leads the MVC in rebounding with nearly 40 a game, Bradley outrebounded the visitors 24-11 in the first period and 41-22 for the game, with 13 coming on the offensive glass.
A big catalyst for that rebounding margin? The 5-foot-8 Deen, who grabbed seven to give him a new career high as a Brave.
“He was going nuts in the locker room,” Wardle said. “He said ‘I led us in rebounding and I was in foul trouble’ so he was having some fun with that.”
Missouri State never led in this one, but they did manage to cut the Bradley lead to single digits halfway through the second half off a lob to N.J. Benson and a layup from Donovan Clay. Yet, the Braves were unfazed, ripping off an 8-1 run to match their biggest lead of the game at 64-48.
Bradley wouldn’t stop there, as two layups from freshman Demarion Burch brought the lead to 20 and Hickman’s final three with 3:39 to play all but put away the Bears. Hannah put the exclamation point on the win less than a minute later, stealing the ball from Missouri State’s Chance Moore and throwing down a windmill dunk on the other end to cap off his career game.
“I think the confidence is growing and it’s starting in practice,” Hickman said. “Before the past two conference games we’ve had two good days of practice of just [being] mentally sharp and yesterday was probably one of our best days of practice of the year and you can see what it led to.”
The Bears’ Cesare Edwards followed up a 25-point performance against Northern Iowa with 17 on Saturday, but the Braves’ defense held leading scorer Alston Mason (18.3 PPG) to just four points, marking only the second time this year he’s scored in single digits. He shot 2-11 from the field and 0-6 from three, part of a larger 18% 3-point showing from Missouri State.
“Hick[man] did a great job, he’s a physical defender,” Wardle said. “You gotta be disciplined in your defense when you guard a player like [Mason] because he’s such an explosive offensive player.”
The visitors’ struggles from the field can be attributed to the Bradley defense keeping them off balance, as the Braves switched from man to zone to press all throughout the game.
“When we got up double digits, we wanted to work the clock a little bit, make them think a little bit and the zone was a great call by my staff,” Wardle said. “I thought they gave me some great adjustments. We talked about it at halftime and then we picked the right time.”
Bradley stays home to take on Evansville on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
