PEORIA, Ill. -- The Bradley women's basketball team plays its Missouri Valley Conference road opener at Southern Illinois for the second time in three years and third time in five seasons Friday night before wrapping up a two-game MVC road swing Sunday afternoon at Evansville.
The Braves (4-8 overall, 0-1 MVC) will face Southern Illinois (9-5 overall, 2-0), which opened Valley play with road wins at Drake and Northern Iowa last week, Friday in a 6 p.m. game at SIU Arena in Carbondale, Ill. Bradley will close out the first conference road swing Sunday at 1 p.m. at Evansville (1-12 overall, 0-2 MVC) as the Braves play their fifth road contest in the last six games.
Notes | ESPN3 | WIRL 1290 AM/102.7 FM | Live Stats | Twitter Updates (@BradleySIDLive)
Both games will be available on ESPN3 as part of The Valley On ESPN3 and can be viewed through WatchESPN.com and the WatchESPN app. BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats for both contests. In addition, Ed Hammond will provide play-by-play on the WIRL 1290 AM/102.7 FM (www.1290wirl.com) radio broadcast.
Bradley has managed at least a split of the road matchups against Southern Illinois and Evansville in eight of the last nine seasons and 13 of the last 15 years. The Braves last win in a Valley road opener came at Southern Illinois on Jan. 5, 2012 with Bradley trying to snap a three-game losing streak in Valley road opening contests.
Southern Illinois has won five of its last six with the Salukis playing seven of their last 10 games on the road. SIU swept the regular-season series last year and Southern Illinois has won three of the last four matchups with Bradley, but the Braves are 23-8 in the series since the team's first win at SIU on Jan. 31, 2001, including an 11-4 road mark during that span.
Evansville has played a conference-low four home game heading into a Friday home matchup with Loyola. Bradley has split the regular-season series with the Purple Aces each of the last two years, but the Braves are 10-3 against UE over the last six years.
Junior Whitney Tinjum (Stacy, Minn./Chisago Lakes/Washington State) has scored in double figures in each of the last two games, averaging 17.0 points off the bench during that span. She started the first five games of the season and averaged 10.9 points per game on 35.7 percent shooting in 20.2 minutes per game in those contests. Tinjum has come off the bench for the last seven games and averaged 9.7 points on 46 percent shooting 17.9 minutes per tilt when not in the starting lineup. She has helped the Bradley reserves outscore the opponents bench by an average of 2.4 points per game.
Sophomore Anneke Schlueter (Ulm, Germany/Max-Weber-Schule) has taken 67 percent of her shots this season from three-point range and is shooting 34 percent from beyond the arc. Her 31 three-pointers this season is two short of ranking among the top 10 season totals by a Bradley underclassmen. Schlueter is averaging a team-high 11.8 points per game, with nearly two-thirds of her scoring coming via the three-pointer.
Not to be outdone, fellow sophomore Danielle Brewer (Coatesville, Ind.) was a perfect 3-for-3 from three-point range in Sunday's MVC opener against Loyola and has made six of her last nine from beyond the arc. After starting the year 1-for-5 from three-point territory, Brewer has made 10-of-21 three's over the last nine games. She is averaging 7.9 points, 3.5 boards, 1.7 assists and 1.0 steal in the last seven. Brewer had 15 points in her only game against Southern Illinois last year and averaged 8.0 points per game in two matchups against Evansville as a freshman.
After the road swing, Bradley hosts Missouri State Friday, Jan. 15 (7 p.m.) to open a stretch in which the Braves play six of eight at Renaissance Coliseum.
