Bradley and Southern Illinois were never separated by more than a few points on Sunday afternoon. In a defensive battle of epic proportions, scoring came at a premium and baskets were far from guaranteed.
But trailing 48-46 with just over 20 seconds left in the game, Bradley junior forward Rienk Mast sank the biggest shot of the game, the Braves’ season and his career with a 3-pointer from the wing through a foul and finished off the 4-point play with a free throw to deliver Bradley’s eighth win in a row against one of the most challenging teams in the Missouri Valley Conference.
“Honestly, probably the biggest shot of my career so far,” Mast said.
After scoring seven in the first half, Mast only had two points the entire second half before that shot, which came from the creative mind of Bradley head coach Brian Wardle.
“It was one of our go-to plays but we threw a little wrinkle in there,” Mast said. “[Ja’Shon Henry] handed it off and I would pop and he would roll and Connor [Hickman] found me on the left. I made the shot.”
“Even though we were down two, anytime you’re on the road and can get a good look at a three you’ve got to take it,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said. “ [That was] one of the biggest shots of Rienk’s career probably. He stepped up big time for us and was a star and he made a big play at the end for us.”
Blackout battle at Banterra
In front of a large crowd at the Banterra Center in Carbondale celebrating the Salukis’ Sweet 16 team from 2002 and SIU’s Blackout Cancer day, the Braves didn’t let the pressure of winning to stay on top of the conference faze them.
Salukis forward Marcus Domask made a pair of free throws to put his team up 45-43 with 1:50 to go. On the next possession, Bradley sophomore guard Zek Montgomery threw in a one-handed runner with his left hand through a foul to tie it back up. A defensive gamble led to a dunk from SIU forward Clarence Rupert to give the hosts the lead before Mast’s heroic shot.
With 10 seconds left, SIU guard Jawaun Newton took a top of the key 3-pointer that went halfway down before rattling out and preventing the Salukis from taking the lead. The shot was highly reminiscent of sophomore guard Connor Hickman’s 3-pointer near the end of Bradley’s game at Belmont earlier in the year which would’ve likely given the Braves a win instead of a loss.
“I’ve seen us miss shots [to win games]; I’ve seen other teams make them against us,” Wardle said. “So it was nice to have a little luck on our side.”
“They had a lot to play for and so did we,” he added. “I’m just proud of our guys staying in the middle and not getting too high or not getting too low and staying confident.”
Braves thrive on other options
The Braves nearly let the game slip away from them with free throws though, as Montgomery missed his, senior forward Malevy Leons split a pair with under a minute left, and senior forward Ja’Shon Henry missed a pair with four seconds left before a halfcourt heave to win from Newton was too strong at the horn. Southern Illinois didn’t fare much better from the stripe down the stretch, going 3-for-6.
Even though the Braves only shot 6-13 from the stripe and 22 percent from deep, the grind-it-out, rockfight win was the epitome of the Braves’ motto in February.
“I thought we had some really good looks from three and then we missed a lot of free throws,” Wardle said. “So there’s things we still can do better but I’ve said this all February: ‘find a way to win in February’ and we were able to do that.”
Not everything went the Braves’ way on Sunday.
To start out, the game’s pace was extremely slow, a deviation from the norm for Bradley who doesn’t exactly run and gun, but still likes to play uptempo. The Braves hardly found any points in transition and several possessions for both teams took over 20-25 seconds long and still ended in difficult jumpers.
It wasn’t the type of game that Wardle and the Braves wanted to play, but they still stuck with it and adapted.
“We tried to push when we could, we tried to shoot quick when we could, but they did a great job of taking us out of transition the whole game,” Wardle said. “We want to get up and down but it was hard because they were sending five or four [players] back every time.”
After being held to five points in his last game against Bradley, Domask put the Salukis on his back and scored 23 to go with nine rebounds and four assists. Bradley also went on two stretches of over four and a half minutes without scoring.
However, the Braves held the Salukis nearly scoreless during those same stretches and SIU shot just 37 percent as a team with no one besides Domask scoring more than seven points. Leons and Montgomery also added huge blocks on two of Domask’s shot attempts down the stretch.
Leons, the frontrunner for MVC Defensive Player of the Year, saw rare occurrences of himself getting beat and finished with three points without a field goal but still impacted the game with seven rebounds, four steals and three blocks.
Additionally, junior point guard Duke Deen was held scoreless for the first time this season and was in foul trouble for much of the game, but Hickman stepped in and scored nine while making his presence felt everywhere.
“I thought he did a great job of just running the show while Duke was in foul trouble,” Wardle said. “Just defensively, he was so good too. People don’t really realize it because he doesn’t get a lot of blocks or steals but I thought it was really dialed in defensively.”
Senior X-Factor
Bradley’s veterans locked down on defense and helped the Braves inch just ahead of the Salukis all game, especially Henry.
He finished off a layup to give Bradley a 9-2 spurt out of the gate before the game’s first media timeout and ended the half by making a bucket through contact to help Bradley jump ahead 26-22 shortly before halftime.
In the early stages of the second half, Salukis’ guard Xavier Johnson scored five straight to tie the game at 29, but Henry made an and-1 with 15:51 to go to keep Bradley ahead 32-29. While Bradley was scoreless for over four minutes in the tortoise-paced second half, SIU eventually took a 37-36 lead after a free throw line jumper from Domask with 8:36 left in the game. Again, the Canadian forward answered the call with a lay-in to put Bradley back on top in the seesaw battle.
Mast led the Braves with 13 points, seven rebounds and five assists, but Henry finished with 12 points to go with five rebounds and played big minutes while Mast was in foul trouble. Notably, Henry now stands just 10 points shy of scoring 1,000 in his college career.
“Me and coach watched a little film session on ways that I can attack these guys and my teammates really gave me the ball in spots for me to score,” Henry said. “I was able to make some baskets down the stretch there.”
“We just liked [Henry’s] matchups in the second half and we stayed big, played very big,” Wardle said. “I thought that kept them kind of big, which we liked in certain matchups, but he had a huge and-one and finishes for us. He plays like a fifth-year senior and that’s what we need.”
With the win, Bradley has now won eight in a row, including five straight on the road. Drake beat fellow MVC power Belmont 70-56 on Sunday, keeping the Braves and the Bulldogs locked together at the top of the MVC with the possibility of the regular season finale between the two being the de facto regular season championship game.
The Braves are in contention for their first regular season MVC Championship – which would give them an automatic bid to the NIT at worst – in 26 years, but they can’t overlook a pesky Valparaiso team that they’ll travel to on Wednesday night.
“We put ourselves in position in seven days to win this thing,” Wardle said. “It’s going to take a championship level mindset and a championship level execution and performance to do it.”
