Bradley women’s basketball looks to focus on their positives despite their loss against Butler, which saw the Braves missing three of their starters.
The team traveled to Indianapolis Wednesday night and were walloped 67-46, never holding a lead during the game. They were outscored 22-5 in the first quarter before going into halftime down 42-17.
The Braves sought to step up their play in the second half and did so by putting up impressive numbers, especially in the fourth quarter.
“We went into that last media timeout down 8-4 in the fourth quarter and we really just challenged our team to win the fourth quarter and we finished on a 12-0 run to end the game and we won the last quarter 16-8,” Bradley assistant coach Ollie Goss said.
While other teams may feel defeated after a slow start such as the one the Braves faced, Bradley’s persistence makes the team unique.
“I didn’t think we had the best start but the positive note that you can take away from it is that we won the second half and we won the fourth quarter,” Goss said. “We executed down the stretch, you know the game was out of reach already but we still battled to the end.”
Bradley dealt with many hardships during the game, as not only was head coach Kate Popovec-Goss still suspended but four Bradley players, each averaging above 20 minutes per game, did not make an appearance against Butler.
”I mean any time you’re playing a little short-handed, you don’t have your head coach, you don’t have a lot of people that have played a significant amount of minutes it can be a little bit of a shell-shocking thing,” Goss said.
The four players that were hurt for Bradley averaged 33.9 out of the team’s 60.3 average points per game. The notable absentees were seniors Daija Powell, Ruba Abo Hashesh and junior Kaylen Nelson.
Bradley takes on Lindenwood next back at Renaissance Coliseum on Saturday. The key for the Braves will be to limit the turnovers in order to turn their misfortune around.
“Coming back home, I think we really just need to start off with taking care of the ball, that’s really important to us,” Goss said. “When we go on slumps it’s usually because we keep turning the ball over.”
