Bradley women’s basketball entered the 2020-21 season with high expectations. Junior Lasha Petree was named the Missouri Valley Conference Preseason Player of the Year and with fellow first-teamer senior Gabi Haack in tow, the Braves were projected to finish second in a crowded MVC.
Flash forward to today — Bradley is sitting at 11-7 overall and 7-4 in conference play ahead of a home series with UNI. The highs have outweighed the lows for the Braves, who are still very much within reach of their goal of a conference championship.
With seven games remaining in the Braves’ regular-season schedule, let’s take a look at how they got here and what the road ahead has in store for them.
Bradley’s non-conference schedule was marked by inconsistent play. The Braves failed to win consecutive games until their second and third games of conference play, with losses to Milwaukee, St. Louis and South Dakota peppering wins against Kansas City, Wright State, Northern Illinois and Quincy.
Early lessons were learned. In two of the Braves’ first three losses, Bradley sent the opposing team to the line 20 or more times. This was particularly troublesome for the Braves against Milwaukee — the Panthers converted on 23 of 29 free throws en route to a 65-60 win.
The one loss in which the Braves didn’t allow many free throws was at the hands of a South Dakota team that has been at the doorstep of the top 25 polls all season long.
Despite a combined 47 points from Petree and Haack, the Braves allowed Coyotes star Hannah Sjerven to collect 31 points on an 11-16 performance from the field. The Coyotes made 13 of 23 three-point attempts to seal an 84-68 win.
Once conference play started, the Braves hit their stride. A 71-56 loss to Drake to open Valley play on Jan. 1 was washed away by an 80-75 win against the Bulldogs the next day. Following the win, Bradley built its first winning streak by rattling off sweeps of Southern Illinois and Evansville.
The Braves then slumped a bit with a split series at home against Loyola-Chicago, a loss at Illinois State and a split on the road at Valparaiso, but bumps in the road are to be expected in a season as odd as this one. Of the Braves’ seven losses, three have come by five points.
Keeping the Braves in the win column and competitive in most losses has been its bench. Considered to be the team’s strongest asset entering the season, the Braves’ depth has provided positives and negatives over the season’s first 18 games.
Two Braves — Sami Martin and Violeta Verano — have left the program since the campaign’s inception. Martin transferred to Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa and has played well since, averaging 12 points in six games. Verano has announced her commitment to transfer to Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
The Braves’ starting five has largely consisted of Petree, Haack, junior Tatum Koenig and seniors Nyjah White and Emily Marsh, with a few exceptions.
Sophomore Veronika Roberts slid into the starting center position while Emily Marsh sat out the season’s first four games recovering from a hip injury. She totaled her season-high in minutes with 16 points against Milwaukee, a game in which she also scored a season-best four points. She has played sparingly since.
The center position is probably the biggest area in which the Braves could use additional help. Marsh and Roberts, along with 6-foot-5-inch senior Uche Ufochukwu and freshmen Tete Danso and Isis Fitch, are a formidable group that can provide opposing teams with several different looks.
Yet they have a tough time matching the production vacated by Chelsea Brackmann, who graduated in 2020 as the Braves second-leading rebounder by average and ranks fourth all-time in blocks.
The Braves are thinner at guard upon the departure of Verano, who had seen her role on the team increase as the games added up. At the time of her final game with the team on Jan. 16, Verano was averaging 7.3 minutes per game and had started one game at Evansville due to a precautionary COVID-19 test, which forced Koenig to travel separately from the team.
Sophomore Mahri Petree and junior Chloe Rice remain to provide some extra enforcement in the backcourt. Petree can provide a spark in multiple roles and is averaging just over seven points in 20.1 minutes per game. Rice has provided quality shooting and defense while 8.3 minutes per game off the bench.
The last seven games of the regular season present a mixed bag for the Braves.
Bradley is just past the halfway mark in MVC play with 11 games in the books and seven ahead. Some of the toughest parts of the schedule remain for the Braves, with a rematch against Illinois State at home and a road series against Missouri State standing out the most.
The Braves dropped a 66-54 decision to the Redbirds in Normal on Jan. 27 in what was arguably the team’s most disappointing game of the season. Passing problems plagued the team, and head coach Andrea Gorski vowed that the team would correct its shortcomings following the game.
The series with Missouri State at JQH Arena will be among the Valley’s series of the season candidates. The Bears were ranked 25th in the most recent AP poll and currently stand at 7-0 in MVC play.
Other highlights over the course of the Braves’ final seven games include the series against UNI that begins tonight and two games to close out the regular season against Indiana State on March 5 and 6. The Panthers are a solid 5-4 in MVC play while the Sycamores are an uninspiring 1-8.
