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Women perfect at home and fittingly perfect in the Valley

Junior Gabi Haack averages 14.3 and 6.8 rebounds per game and is shooting 37.5 percent from 3-point range.

It shouldn’t come as an out-of-left field surprise, but the Bradley women’s basketball team has been impressive. Sometimes basketball is the story of two halves, or seasons but these Braves have been storming up and down the court from the first jump ball.

Bradley is 16-2 and 7-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference. It hasn’t lost at home since Jan. 18, 2019 to Missouri State, a Bears team that reached the Sweet 16 that season. Those Bears are now ranked No. 21/24 nationally.

The Braves travel to Springfield tonight and bring their league leading scoring defense along (59.9 ppg). The Braves hold their opponents to 27 percent field goal percentage while the Bears rank last in the MVC at 38.2 percent. Bradley boasts a 0.9 point margin higher than the Bears this season.

That’ll be the game to watch to see where Bradley truly is in the realm of the NCAA.

This season has been epitomized by how the Braves play team basketball, and every player that sees the floor contributes. Four players average double-digit scoring in conference play (sophomore guard Lasha Petree 18.6, junior guard Gabi Haack 14.4, junior forward Nyjah White 13.9, senior forward Chelsea Brackmann 10.7) and when one is off, someone else steps up, including reserves.

Before the season, head coach Andrea Gorski said that reaching postseason play required an emphasis on the details and the ability to beat Drake and UNI.

“We gotta go get them,” Gorski said on Oct. 23. “Everyone knows the talent we have on our team and we aren’t going to be overlooked.”

Those details were taken into account last weekend at Renaissance Coliseum. The Braves beat the Panthers for the first time in 17 tries dating back to Feb. 17, 2012. Less than two days later, Bradley took down perennial powerhouse Drake for the first time in 13 tries, dating back to Feb. 21, 2013.

Following the Drake victory, Gorski said that the two wins are just one rung on the ladder, each.

“[Winning] is to be proud of but I like our team’s mentality of one game at a time,” Gorski said. “If we just take care of the small things and don’t worry about making a six point play, just one possession at a time, one rebound at a time [we will keep the undefeated conference season going].”

Sophomore Tatum Koenig, the lone Iowan for the Braves, played all 40 minutes, scoring 16 points in the victory over Drake. She said that the team found open players when they needed and executed on defense.

“We don’t run any plays for her and she managed the game really well with only one turnover against a really good defensive team,” Gorski said of the hard-nosed point guard.

She averages 4.7 assists, 7.3 points and 1.9 turnovers while playing 33.7 minutes at the point guard position during the conference season.

In the wins over the Iowa contingent of the Valley, Bradley forced seven more turnovers than they committed. Additionally, leading scorer sophomore Lasha Petree was 2-22 over the weekend. You can normally pencil her in for 18-plus points.

The Braves are set for success and if the season ended today, would surely be an NCAA Tournament team. According to USA Today they are No. 29 nationally. This season the Valley truly does run deep and the Braves are leading that charge.

Gorski has repeatedly said the team just find a way to win. They have and that’s thanks to their ability to execute on defense and maintain trust in shooting.

Once a Bradley guard, Gorski will look to prepare her team to shut down the top two 3-point shooting teams this weekend with her defense that leads the conference with 4.8 blocks per game remains aggressive. The head coach herself was a tough player and instills that in her student-athletes. It might just (and already has) carry them to surpass the preseason poll tab of fourth.

“I think [being picked fourth] is great, you’ve got to raise your level and you’ve got to be flawless when you play those [highly touted] teams so I like that we are playing them in a row. Hopefully it will sharpen our focus,” Gorski said.

That toughness and seemingly mighty focus will need to be on display when the Braves tip-off against the Bears (6-1 in MVC) at 7 tomorrow night. If Bradley plays team basketball on both ends of the court, it might just pull off one of biggest upsets in the Valley this year. It plays at Southern Illinois (4-3 in MVC) Sunday at 2 p.m., the only team to beat Missouri State.

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