The Bradley men’s basketball team’s woes continued this week as they dropped their fifth and sixth straight games by double digits against Wichita State and Southern Illinois.
The Braves travelled to Carbondale on Wednesday to take on the Salukis, a team they had beaten at home earlier this season. The Salukis came out hungry for revenge jumping out to a 14-2 start and never looking back.
“[It’s a] tough group to motivate,” head coach Brian Wardle said. “We came out flat defensively; gave up bucket after bucket. We had a lot of inconsistency and guys coming in making a ton of mistakes right away, right from the jump.”
Southern Illinois killed Bradley on the boards, outrebounding the Braves 41-25 including 16 offensive rebounds. Though Bradley only trailed by six points at the half, Wardle struggled to find a group of guys to defend and play through mistakes in the second half.
“It’s a shame that we have to search like this to be quite honest and it’s on me,” Wardle said.
In a game in which a lot of whistles were blown, Bradley was unable to convert from the free-throw line shooting a horrid 15-31 from the stripe.
“No one has shown to be able to play through and recover after two or three mistakes in a row,” Wardle said. “We are lacking confidence right now, we really are, and it’s frustrating to everyone on that sideline.”
Southern Illinois went on to win the game 85-65.
The game against Wichita State on Sunday was a tale of two halves. In the first half, the Braves frustrated the Shockers. They were locked in defensively and made great rotations.
“For a young team with so many new guys I thought they were the aggressor,” Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall said. “They had a wonderful game plan. They came out and executed it beautifully in the first half. They were very physical when we got the ball inside, they were doubling. We didn’t handle that very well.”
Coming into the game, the Shockers were averaging 11.5 turnovers per game, best in the MVC, but the Braves forced them into 13 first half turnovers leading to 12 points on the offensive end, and a 25-20 lead going into the locker room.
“The first half was one of our better halves,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said. “It was fun to watch, fun to coach, and then we struggled to sustain that.”
The second half played out much differently. With under four minutes gone by in the half, the Shockers had tied the game at 29 and the Braves would never hold another lead. The Bradley defense got lax allowing Wichita State to shoot 60 percent from the floor and 50 percent from behind the three-point line.
“We knew they were coming out and pressing,” Wardle said. “We knew they were going to try to impose their will on us. They’re a good team because they compete defensively for forty minutes every night, we aren’t there yet.”
The Shockers were led by freshman Landry Shamet and junior Conner Frankamp who scored 19 and 15 points respectably, and hit big shots down the stretch
The turning point in the game came when Shocker forward Rashard Kelly got a steal, then went up for a dunk in transition, only to be turned away by the big left paw of junior forward JoJo McGlaston. The block ended up at number eight on Sportcenter’s Top Ten, but Shocker forward Markis McDuffie corralled the ball after the block found a wide-open Frankamp who knocked down the corner three, putting Wichita State up 51-39.
“Today the theme is lesson learned without getting burned,” Marshall said. “We were happy to right the ship in terms of our offensive execution. I don’t see Bradley every night but if Bradley plays as well as they did in the first twenty minutes they’re on their way to getting really good again.”
Freshman point guard Darrell Brown continued to lead the Braves in scoring with 18 points on 6-13 shooting.
“I think this was the first game we really had a great first half and we played tough,” Brown said. “I think the lesson would be to come out second half with greater intensity than we did in the first half to put teams away, but we’re still learning how to do that so it’ll come with time.”
Bradley (3-8) will return home at 1 p.m. Saturday to face Drake (5-6) for the first time this season.
