Bradley women’s basketball has been on a roller coaster ride.
The last few weeks featured a blowout loss, a new member being added to the team and a key player suffering a season-ending injury.
Head coach Kate Popovec-Goss was away from the team as she prepared to welcome her first child. While she was away, the Braves suffered a 39-point loss to the University of Nebraska, their worst of the season, and standout junior Clair McDougall sustained a lower-body injury that will keep her out for the rest of the season.
After the up and down nature of December’s genesis, Bradley needed some stability, and they got it with back-to-back wins with conference play on the horizon.
“We did have some tough competition in our other games in this past stretch with Coach Pop out and we played pretty good basketball in two out of three of those,” Miller said. “This was a great bounce back. The kids showed a lot of fortitude and a lot of people stepped up in different ways.”
A wake-up call
The Braves’ first test was against Chicago State, and they started the game well, at least offensively. Freshman guard Maya Foz led the way with 10 of Bradley’s first 18 points. However, the defense lagged as Bradley allowed too many points in the paint.
“We gave up too many points in the first, but as quick as that happened, we had a conversation,” Miller said. “They broke down our middle a little bit too much and I thought, although we were doing a good job on the glass, they were going one-on-one and we were doing a bad job with our weakside defense.”
That conversation worked.
Bradley came out defensively sound in the second quarter. The Braves did a much better job of contesting shots, staying in passing lanes and securing defensive rebounds. In the second quarter, Bradley gave up just six points in the period and took a 39-22 lead into the break.
Offensively, the Braves unleashed a secret weapon: graduate guard-forward Tamia Perryman.
The former four-year Marian University standout put up eight points in the second and totaled ten by the halftime buzzer.
She ended the day with her first Division I double-double, scoring 15 points and grabbing ten boards as the Braves crushed Chicago State in the second half and cruised to an 85-57 win.
“It feels good, especially with Claire going down in the last game,” Perryman said. “Claire is a hustle player and she plays aggressive, nitty-gritty. And that was my partner when we would go subbing in together, so with her going down, I knew that we all, as a team, had to collectively help rebound, but today that was just the main thing for me.”
Perryman, who earned Ameren Player of the Game honors, also got a lot of praise from Coach Miller.
“When I look at Tamia Perryman’s numbers, I feel like she’s definitely been a spark for us lately and [is] playing some of her better basketball now and kind of getting her groove,” Miller said. “I really like the way she’s attacking but also hitting outside. She’s just playing with a lot of joy and when she gets like that, I think we get rolling.”
Along with Perryman, three other Braves scored in the double digits, those being Foz with 19, fifth-year guard-forward Kaylen Nelson with 14 and sophomore guard Caitlin Washington with 10.
Big return, bigger win
Bradley suited up again three days later to take on an 8-2 South Dakota team for Coach Pop’s return from maternal leave. In contrast to their previous outing, the first quarter was all about the defense.
Thirteen points were scored in the first ten minutes, with Bradley’s only buckets coming from McDermid and sophomore guard-forward Lila Posthuma.
“I was really proud of our defensive effort, but we can go score,” Popovec-Goss said. “I think we just lacked aggression on the offensive end. South Dakota does a good job; they want to slow you down, they want to grind things out. They’re physical, they’re tough and I think we just let them dictate a lot of what we were doing on offense.”
Both teams turned their offensive output up a notch in the second quarter, with the Braves outscoring the Coyotes 17-14. Foz provided seven points for Bradley and would go on to finish the game with 14 points and six rebounds.
At the break, the game was tied at 22, and the Braves knew they’d need a more balanced effort to come away with a win.
“We went into the locker room and we said, ‘hey, we’re playing pretty good defense,’” Foz said. “We held them to 22 points [and] that’s great, but we need to score. We weren’t hitting our shots, but we need to start scoring and still keep up the good defense we were playing the whole game.”
That’s exactly what the Braves did in the third, scoring 27 points to South Dakota’s 16, including a nine-point quarter from Perryman.
Despite Bradley being the underdogs in this game, they were up 49-38 with one quarter to go, and the mood couldn’t have been better on the sidelines.
“I thought we were just playing with confidence,” Popovec-Goss said. “We were sharing the basketball, we were playing with pace and we were being really aggressive. And it was everyone, it was one through five, it wasn’t one player. One of the best things is when your best player is held under her average, when you can have other people step up and find ways to chip in buckets and still win games, I think that’s really significant.”
However, the Coyotes had a few tricks up their sleeve.
Five minutes into the fourth quarter, the lead was cut down to seven and, with just under thirty seconds left, the score was 63-62 in favor of Bradley.
“One thing that I keep talking about with my team is we’re really young,” Popovec-Goss said. “If you look at our play sheet, we played nine players today; only three of them are upperclassmen. So, I think one of the things that’s really hard is people don’t understand to play with a lead is not always easy.”
“And I think what we did is we started playing timid on defense,” Popovec-Goss added. “We were afraid to foul, we were just kind of giving them easy shots and we had not done that the whole game.”
A turnover gave South Dakota the chance to take the lead, but Wardle came in clutch with a steal that forced them to foul.
The Peoria native went on to sink both her free throws and, thanks to some tough defense, the Coyotes missed the tying shot with no time left, and Renaissance Coliseum, which was filled with students from local schools on Field Trip Day, went wild.
“I knew [Mya] was going to do something great,” Foz said. “She got that steal and honestly saved us the game, probably. But it was a team effort, so we were really happy with it.”
The Braves’ scoring was very evenly spread. Foz’s 14 was followed by Perryman and Nelson scoring 12, Washington with eight and Wardle and freshman forward Kali Fortson putting up seven.
“I love how balanced we are,” Popovec-Goss said. “I think we’re a lot more versatile than we have been in years past. It’s not fun to only rely on one person. Last year, especially, relied so heavily on Soleil Barnes, and we miss her to pieces, but the balance that we have this year makes us a little bit tougher offensively and I think that’s why we’re so much more efficient.”
Bradley will be back in RenCo to start conference play against Southern Illinois on Thursday. They will carry a two-game winning streak into this game, which the team says will boost their confidence, but the Braves’ biggest morale booster is that they will be in Peoria.
“We obviously would like to have won by a little bit more but it was fun winning by three. We stayed composed and we won the game, so that’s all that matters,” Foz said. “We’re happy to have our first conference game at home; it’s really exciting to us. We’ve protected our home court [so far] and we’re looking to do that for our first conference game before we go into the new year.”
