PEORIA, Ill. -- The Bradley volleyball team will make its first Missouri Valley Conference Tournament appearance since qualifying for the 2005 event, facing Southern Illinois Thursday at 5 p.m. in the opening round of the tournament at Charles Koch Arena in Wichita, Kan.
The Braves (13-14 overall, 7-11 MVC) tied Loyola for sixth in the final regular-season standings and earned the sixth and final spot in the tournament field due to BU's sweep of the regular-season series against third-place Southern Illinois (18-12 overall, 13-5 MVC).
BradleyBraves.com will provide a link to live stats for all BU matches at the MVC Tournament. A free video stream of Thursday's opening round games and Friday's semifinal matches will be available at ESPN3. Saturday's 4:30 p.m. championship game will be televised on Fox Sports Midwest, Fox Sports Indiana, Fox Sports Kansas City, Fox College Sports, Comcast SportsNet Chicago and ESPN3.
In the season's first meeting, Southern Illinois jumped out to a two-sets-to-one lead and held a 21-18 advantage in the third set before Bradley rattled off seven consecutive points to take the set 25-21. The Braves went on to win the next two sets to claim the team's first victory on the road when down two sets since the 1999 season.
A short-handed Bradley team swept the Salukis on Oct. 26 at Renaissance Coliseum 25-23, 25-21, 25-19 to complete BU's second regular-season sweep of SIU in the last three years. Senior Amy Angelos (Waukegan, Ill./Waukegan), who is averaging a team-best 3.22 kills per set, missed the last meeting in the series due to injury.
Southern Illinois and Bradley have never met in the conference tournament and the Braves will be looking for the first victory in the league's postseason event for the first time since topping Wichita State in the opening round of the 2002 tournament in Peoria. The winner of Thursday's matchup advances to face MVC co-champ and #2 seed Northern Iowa Friday at 5 p.m.
Bradley's five-set victory at Drake to wrap up the regular season was the squad's first road win to end a regular season since 2001 as the Braves finished with their best conference road record since 2006 (3-6). The team's seven road (4) and neutral (3) victories are the squad's best total since 2004 and Bradley looks to improve on a 15-3 (.833) neutral site record since the start of 2009.
Senior Alise Tupuritis (Des Plaines, Ill./Maine West) recorded her 1,000th career kill at Drake, collecting 11 kills and a career-best 24 digs for her team-high 13th double-double. She enters the Valley tournament 11th in school history with 1,004 kills and needs 25 to pass Laura Benzing for 10th at Bradley.
Angelos is seven blocks from 300 in her career and needs 45 kills to pass Jenna Passman for seventh on Bradley's all-time kills list. Angelos has reached double figures in kills in four consecutive matches and five of the six outings since returning to the lineup.
Freshman Rachel Jones (Champaign, Ill./Centennial) posted a .328 attack percentage in Missouri Valley Conference play for the best season hitting percentage in MVC play at Bradley. Passman held the previous mark with a .326 attack percentage during the 2002 Valley slate.
Senior Lauren Zerante (Elmhurst, Ill./York) is closing in on a few distinctions of her own. Her 527 digs this fall rank as the fourth best season total at Bradley and she needs just 12 digs for the highest season total by a Brave since 1985. Zerante is fifth in BU history with 1,327 career digs and needs just three to pass Sam Hardwick for fourth on the all-time chart. In addition, Zerante is just 35 digs from jumping three spots into second in Bradley history.
