Bradley sophomore guard Connor Hickman turned around with his arms raised as soon as a 3-pointer left the hands of senior guard Ville Tahvanainen.
As the shot – Tahvanainen’s sixth 3-pointer of the game on six attempts – fell through the net, junior guard Duke Deen windmilled his right arm all the way down the floor too as a throng of fans at Carver Arena all came to their feet.
Saying the Braves had fun in their 83-48 win over the Murray State Racers on Saturday afternoon was an understatement.
With a little over two minutes left to play, walk-on sophomore guard Sam Hennessey scored his first points of his Bradley career on a corner three. Soon afterwards in the games’ closing minute, fellow walk-on sophomore guard Cade Hardtke sank a fadeaway jumper for his first points as a Brave too. The noise in Carver Arena was near deafening, with nothing but good feelings pulsing through the crowd of over 6,000.
“Honestly, [Hardtke and Hennessey] are the reason we’re ready for each game,” Hickman said. “They keep the practice competitive for us. That’s the beauty of really the heart of our team.”
“Sam and Cade kind of epitomize our unselfishness every day and how they practice, how they help with scout team and in everything,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said. “To see them finally get officially in the books is pretty special for everyone in that locker room.”
Using a 20-25 mark from the field in the second half to key the victory, Bradley’s win streak now stands at six games as they continue to jockey alongside Drake for first place in the Missouri Valley Conference with four games left in the regular season. The Bulldogs throttled previous MVC co-leader Southern Illinois 82-59 on Saturday.
The Braves though are right up there in terms of scariness. After muddling through a multi-game slump, Tahvanainen scored 18 on Saturday to lead Bradley, after scoring 13 three days ago at Illinois State. 27 of those 31 points have came from the 3-point line.
The senior nailed his first two threes in the span of under a minute to make it 67-42 Bradley with just under six minutes to play. He heat-checked himself with a pull-up trey in transition, sank it, then dropped in two more shots behind the arc to cap off a 17-2 Bradley run that put the Braves up 78-44 and ripped the hearts out of the Racers.
As he knocked down his fifth and sixth triples of the game, the red-clad mob chanted his name.
“In my experience, I’ve never heard anything like that happen so that was going through my head,” Tahvanainen said. “I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this before,’ so it was pretty cool.”
Hickman, who had also endured a midseason struggle, poured in another good game and scored 13. Pair that with the latest in a string of strong games from junior forward Rienk Mast who put up 14 and Malevy Leons putting on a defensive clinic, the Braves are hitting their stride more than ever at this point of the season.
“[Our team] is confident right now, it’s connected,” Wardle said. “That doesn’t mean you’re always going to play great, but I think our mental toughness is better. You know, it’s the little things like that that can take a team into a great run in February.”
Sparks off the bench
In terms of mental toughness, the Braves were Olympic-level powerlifters on Saturday. The Racers started off the game imposing their will in the paint and on the defensive end for the first ten minutes.
A 3-pointer from Murray State’s Justin Morgan gave the visitors a 16-10 lead around halfway through the first half. Four baskets from four different Braves, including a breakaway and a backboard-rattling slam from junior forward Darius Hannah, helped them climb back before Racers’ guard Rob Perry made it 21-18 Murray State a few minutes before the half.
The Bradley defense wouldn’t allow the Racers to score another point until the 18:08 mark of the second half. After Perry’s jumper, Murray State went 0-for-8 from the field to finish the half with a turnover and Hannah blocking two of those shots.
“We kind of came together and realized ‘Hey, shots aren’t always going to fall but our defense can always be there,’ and we started to really pick that up,” Hickman said.
Meanwhile, the Braves’ bench came alive with a trey from sophomore guard Christian Davis, two layups from Hannah, a 3-point play from Leons, and a deep ball from Tahvanainen to give the team a 31-21 lead and a 13-0 run heading into the locker room.
“It was a slow start for us offensively, then the ball started to move,” Wardle said. “I thought our bench was huge at the end of the first half. Darius gave us a huge lift [with] blocked shots, dunks, steals and deflections. Christian Davis had a huge three [which] kind of got us off the snide of missing a lot of threes in a row.”
An eye for an eye
After falling 67-58 to Murray State on the road just over a month ago, the Braves exacted their revenge in dominating fashion in the second half.
Six straight points to start the second half gave the hosts a 19-0 run and the open looks came in bunches. The Braves ran their offense at will against a Racers’ squad, who’s body language suffered greatly during the scoreless run and never recovered.
At Murray State, Deen, Mast and Hickman struggled mightily and combined for 15 points on 4-27 shooting. This time around, Mast put up 14, Hickman ended with 13 and many others all got in on the act. Eleven different Braves scored and the team shot over 50 percent from the field for the third game in a row.
“Last game, they did not see us as a team; they did not see Bradley basketball,” Hickman said. “We’ve been rolling these past few games, but I think we just kept getting better and I think we really showed that tonight. [It’s been] somebody different every night, that’s what makes us dangerous makes us a team.”
Let the good times roll
Throughout his four years at Bradley, Tahvanainen said that his third to last game at Carver Arena was some of the most fun he’s ever had.
“This is definitely one of the ones I’m going to remember,” Tahvanainen said. “The crowd was awesome tonight. We just played a great game as a team.”
The Braves will stay in Peoria to take on the Missouri State Bears on Wednesday night at 7 p.m as they look to continue their best play of the season so far.
“We’ve been together great these last couple weeks and even through the losses we had earlier in the year,” Tahvanainen said. “I mean, we’ve just been sticking together this whole time and that’s what makes this whole thing fun.”
