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Slow second half dooms Bradley against SIU in MVC 1st round

Rienk Mast puts up a shot in the first round of the MVC tournament against Southern Illinois on March 4, 2021. Photo by Kayla Johnson.

Bradley men’s basketball head coach Brian Wardle has maintained that the first game of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament is always the hardest. 

On Thursday night in St. Louis, that proved to be the case for a beleaguered, inexperienced Braves squad, as they fell to No. 9 seed Southern Illinois 73-63 in the first round of Arch Madness to end the season — and the quest for a third-straight tournament title. 

“We just had brain freezes today,” Wardle said. “We just did not execute offensively out of timeouts, either… We did not play our best, but Southern Illinois had a lot to do with that.” 

For the 6th straight game, the Braves were without seniors Elijah Childs and Danya Kingsby, as well as junior Terry Nolan Jr. due to suspension. Junior forward Ja’Shon Henry, who injured his ankle in Bradley’s upset victory over Drake in the regular season finale on Feb. 27, was in a walking boot and unavailable to play. 

They wouldn’t be the only absences that played a factor in the loss, though. 

After scoring six points in the opening minutes, Salukis’ star sophomore guard Lance Jones needed to be helped off the court with a left ankle injury with 14:22 on the clock. The Braves would eventually capitalize, taking a 14-11 lead a minute following the injury. 

That lead lasted a whole 16 seconds, as SIU sophomore guard Ben Harvey knocked in a 3-pointer to tie the game, followed by another deep ball by Steve Verplancken that put the Salukis ahead for good. 

The Harvey bucket was a sign of things to come, as Harvey knocked in a game-high 24 points on 8-16 shooting. 

“When one of our best players goes down, it’s the next man up,” Harvey said. “We wanted to win that one for him. The next man stepped up, we all stepped up and hit shots…” 

Despite the Southern surge, the Braves were within six points at the halftime break. However, it was a 4-0 run to start the second half that grew the Saluki lead to 10 and brought the fans to life with chants of “SIU-SIU.” 

That lead eventually swelled to as large as 13 with 10:15 remaining in the game. 

The fight from the Braves didn’t stop there, though, especially from redshirt freshman forward Rienk Mast. The Netherlands native matched Harvey’s 24 points, 16 of which came in the second half. 

“Today’s just a day we had to leave it all out there,” Mast said after the career-high outing. “I hope I did.”

Mast, along with 16 points from sophomore guard Sean East, helped Bradley narrow the deficit to just five points with 2:04 remaining in the game, which prompted chants of “BU” — reminiscent of the ones heard during Bradley’s last two runs to tournament titles. 

The comeback, as well as the nostalgia, was halted there, as Harvey drove to the basket, knocked in a layup and drew a foul, sending the Saluki fan base and bench into a frenzy. 

“I just saw that [Tahvanainen] was helping up a little bit too far, pressed in, worried about the 3-point shot,” Harvey said. “I decided to take him downhill and finished the ball … It was an amazing feeling. It’s amazing to have the fans out there.”

While SIU moves on to play top-seeded Loyola-Chicago tomorrow, the loss bookends a roller-coaster season for the Braves, who finish with a 12-16 record, including a 6-13 record in the Valley. It’s the program’s worst campaign since 2016-17 when the team finished 13-20. 

Despite the loss, the season nearly ended hours earlier, according to Wardle. The Braves received a positive COVID-19 test result in the early hours of the morning. If the result stood, Bradley would have been eliminated from the tournament. 

However, after MVC procedures took place, the test was confirmed as negative and Bradley was allowed to play. 

“For two hours, we were packing our bags,” Wardle said. “That’s kind of this season, it was never really a smooth ride.” 

 

That’s kind of this season; it was never really a smooth ride

– Brian Wardle on the 2020-21 season.

All things considered, Wardle and Mast consider the ups and downs a learning experience. 

“I think we got away from our identity a little bit,” Mast said. “This offseason, we’ve just got to work on just being tough, being competitive and being strong.” 

“We never got it going in conference play, at all, but I learned a lot,” Wardle said. “There were a lot of things out of our control this year, and there were some, obviously, self-inflicted wounds that we brought upon ourselves. And that’s what you can control — you’ve got to learn from those things and get better.” 

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