PEORIA, Ill. - Junior guard Sam Maniscalco led five Bradley players in double-figures with 19 points and the host Braves (10-9, 5-4 MVC) rolled to their third consecutive victory with a 74-64 decision versus Evansville (6-13, 0-9 MVC) in Missouri Valley Conference action Saturday afternoon at Carver Arena.
By earning its seventh consecutive home win against the Purple Aces, Bradley moved into a three-way tie for third place in The Valley standings with both Drake and Illinois State. The winner of Sunday night's Creighton-Missouri State game will join the logjam in third place, one game behind second-place Wichita State.
Junior guard Andrew Warren added 17 points for Bradley, while sophomore center Will Egolf and senior guard Chris Roberts both scored 11 and sophomore forward Taylor Brown chipped in 10 points. Egolf and Brown also shared game-high honors with eight rebounds apiece and Egolf set a career-high with four blocked shots. Evansville was led by Denver Holmes' 18 points. Colt Ryan added 12 and Kavon Lacey completed the double-digit scoring with 10 points.
Evansville scored the game's first basket and the lead twice changed hands before the Braves used a 12-0 run to take the lead for good. Brown started the run with a jumper for a 7-6 lead with 5-minutes, 11-seconds into the game. Following a Sam Singh layup, Maniscalco buried back-to-back 3-pointers and Roberts finished off the run with an alley-oop slam from Egolf for a 17-6 advantage with 10:50 left in the half.
Bradley hit its first five 3-point field goal attempts and extended its first-half advantage to as many as 14 points before settling for a 39-27 lead at the break.
After the visitors trimmed their deficit to eight points, 43-35, early in the second half, Bradley used a 16-7 surge to break the game open. Although Evansville managed to prevent Bradley from holding a fourth consecutive opponent to fewer than 60 points for the first time since the 1997-98 season, the Purple Aces got no closer than nine points the rest of the game.
Bradley's defense did hold a third consecutive opponent to less than 40 percent shooting from the field. Evansville made only 22-of-56 (.393) field goal attempts, including 6-of-20 (.300) from 3-point range. The Braves were far more efficient, shooting 52.1 percent (25-48) from the floor and 58.3 percent (7-12) from beyond the arc. Warren (3-3) and Maniscalco (3-4) combined to make 6-of-7 3-point field goal attempts. And while Evansville came into the game third in The Valley with a +3.8 rebounding margin per game, the Braves won the battle of the boards, 35-25.
Bradley will host a second straight home game for the first time since early December when Creighton visits Wednesday night for a 7:05 p.m. tip at Carver Arena. Wednesday's game will be televised throughout Central Illinois (channel 74) and Chicago (102) on Comcast cable systems.
