Bradley women’s basketball bounced back from a heartbreaking 73-72 loss to Northern Iowa on Friday night to notch a comfortable 78-63 victory in the Saturday afternoon nightcap.
Keyed by Nyjah White and Gabi Haack’s respective 29 and 21-point performances, Saturday’s Missouri Valley Conference victory was seldom in doubt. The two seniors were efficient from everywhere on the floor, combining to go 17-31 from the field and a perfect 14-14 at the charity stripe.
For White, who also totaled 10 rebounds and dished out 5 assists, the rounded effort represented a career-high in scoring.
“I think [the goal] was just to go up strong,” White said. “You know, be there for my teammates [who] are counting on me to make the shots. A lot of them were around the rim. So I just want to be strong and made sure you know, I gave them what they gave me.”
“She was just very focused on both ends of the floor,” Bradley head coach Andrea Gorski said. “I thought most of her shots were really good, hard takes to the basket … she was very determined today, she was not going to let us lose this game.”
After Gorski offered critical words for the Braves’ start to Friday’s game, her team exploded out of the gates at a torrid pace on Saturday. The Bradley lead stood at 16-7 after a quarter of play, ballooning to 42-21 at the halftime intermission.
“We started out with the defensive intensity,” Gorski said. “So many times your offense leads your defense and we don’t want to be that team. We want our defense to fight, we want that to fire us up on offense … I think we just came in thinking we’re going to defend today, and we’re going to be excited about it and we’re going to communicate.”
The Braves slipped a bit in the third quarter as UNI mounted a 24-11 run. The Panthers shot 43 percent within the third frame and were able to close the gap to five points when Karli Rucker converted an and-one to make the score 53-48 with 9:34 remaining in the game.
But the Braves – specifically White and Haack – were quick with a response.
White converted an and-one on the ensuing possession that bumped the Bradley lead back to eight points. Haack then went on a personal six-point run that included a layup and four free throws.
The layup came on an assist from White and was one of 21 assists the Braves recorded.
“When we jog, we’re not stressing out the defense,” Gorski said. “So it’s really hard to get good ball movement. It’s hard to get open passes, but today I thought our pace on offense was just so much better.”
UNI never seriously contended for the victory thereafter. The deficit hovered in the low double-digits for the remainder of the contest but never once snuck back under 10 points.
Other notables for the Braves in Saturday’s win included Emily Marsh, who tallied 9 points on 4-5 shooting and Lasha Petree, who was held to just 5 points but equaled that figure in both blocks and rebounds.
Kam Finley, who scored 25 points for the Panthers on Friday night and hit a last-second three that gave UNI its final lead, finished with just six points on Saturday.
Next up for the Braves is a hotly-anticipated road series at a ranked Missouri State team that currently stands undefeated in MVC play.
“It’s a big weekend,” Gorski said. “So I think we need to learn from this because they’re even more physical than Northern Iowa. So we can’t shy away from that. We have to show that we can, we can be a physical team as well.”
Bradley will play Missouri State on Feb. 19 and 20.
