Heading into last weekend’s game against Evansville, Bradley men’s basketball had not won a road game since defeating Loyola in Chicago last season, a streak that spanned the team’s prior 15 games away from Carver Arena.
Junior center Nate Wells, apparently, was tired of that streak.
Down 17 points with 17 minutes left in the game, Wells checked in for Bradley and sparked a 24-3 run that lasted less than seven minutes.
Bradley would take a five-point lead before squeaking past the Aces late 56-50.
One of the more telling plays of the game occurred with 1:44 left in the game. Tied at 48, the 7-footer Wells missed a three-point shot that would have given Bradley the lead. Junior guard Tramique Sutherland, all 5-foot-11-inches of him, was there for the rebound and the putback to give the Braves the lead for good.
Wells would finish the game 2-of-3 from behind the line and 3-of-6 total for eight points in 16 minutes. Sutherland led all Bradley scorers with 18 points in 38 minutes of action.
“I know ever since high school I’ve been able to knock down mid-range [jump shots] easily and I’ve got pretty good form, so coach Ford said ‘Hey, let’s try to step it out a couple more feet,’” Wells said. “I’ve been practicing a couple months and it’s been going pretty well at practice. At the game, nothing would’ve went wrong if I would’ve missed it; it’s not like the game was going well anyway, so I just let it go.”
The game marked the third game of junior Warren Jones’ three-game suspension, making him eligible to return Wednesday against Drake.
Jones, as it turns out, would not play at all in Bradley’s 60-54 loss to the Bulldogs. Head coach Geno Ford said during the postgame show that Jones did not sit because he was still suspended.
“There’s a white ‘x’ at the scorer’s table, and where they sit and where I am I’m always in between [them and] that ‘x,’” Ford said. “You don’t get in unless you pass me. And when I feel good about him passing me, he’ll play. It has nothing to do with him being a bad kid or doing anything else, I need to see something in practice that I didn’t feel like I’ve seen.”
With Jones on the bench, Bradley turned to Sutherland to help Bradley’s offense. The junior college transfer led the Braves with 17 points and five assists, an impressive feat given how poor the rest of Bradley’s offense played.
“[Sutherland] was terrific,” Ford said. “He had five assists,;that’s hard to do when the rest of the team shot 14 of 45. That’s good precision from him.”
The bad shooting started in the first half. Bradley opened the game by shooting just 19 percent through the first 12 minutes and found themselves down 17-6.
Sutherland sparked a rally to close the half, scoring 10 points and leading the Braves on an 18-4 run that gave them a 24-21 lead at halftime.
The Braves started the second half cold, and unlike the first half, they stayed there.
Bradley took 27 shots and made just 10 in the second half, while Drake shot 50 percent from the field and a perfect 14 of 14 from the free throw line.
“We just didn’t shoot the ball well,” Ford said. “That’s the generic that nobody wants to hear, but we got 21 more shots up than they did…You’ve just got to shoot a little bit better percentage.”
Bradley returns home to Carver Arena this weekend for a game against Loyola on Sunday at 1 p.m. The Braves will celebrate Kaboom’s birthday against the Ramblers. The team also has a home match Feb. 18 against I-74 rival Illinois State.
