PEORIA, Ill. -- Bradley women's basketball opens up a three-game road swing to conclude the 2015-16 regular-season slate with a pair of games in Iowa this weekend, taking on league-leading Northern Iowa Friday at 7 p.m. in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and third-place Drake Sunday afternoon (2 p.m.) in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Braves are 3-3 since hitting the halfway point of the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season slate and are coming off a 52-38 home win against I-74 rival Illinois State to finish out the season's home schedule. Bradley is tied with Wichita State for eighth in the MVC standings and the Braves need to win at least one of the three remaining road games on the schedule to have a chance to earn the #7 seed in the upcoming MVC Tournament.
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. In addition, BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats along with the WIRL 1290 AM/102.7 FM (www.1290wirl.com) radio broadcast with Ed Hammond providing play-by-play.
Northern Iowa owns a league-best 11-3 record in Valley play and has won four consecutive games after an 85-74 home win against Drake last weekend. Bradley and UNI enter the game as two of the top defensive teams in the MVC this season. The season's first meeting was a low-scoring contest with the Panthers pulling out a 55-47 victory at Renaissance Coliseum back on Jan. 31 to wrap up the first half of the Valley schedule.
Drake has lost back-to-back games heading into a Friday night home game against Loyola and the Bulldogs are tied with Southern Illinois for third in the league standings at 10-4. Sunday's 2 p.m. game at the Knapp Center will feature the top scoring team in the conference in Drake at 79.9 points per game against a Bradley squad which has held nine of the last 12 opponents to under 60 points and an average of 56.3 points per game during that stretch.
Northern Iowa averages a league-high 7.6 three-pointers per game and Drake is second in the MVC in three-pointers per contest at 7.5 per outing. The Braves lead the Valley in three-point field goal percentage defense, holding teams to 28.7 percent shooting from beyond the arc and conference foes have shot just 26.6 percent from three-point range.
Sophomore Anneke Schlueter (Ulm, Germany/Max-Weber-Schule) scored a career-high 22 points to help highlight Sunday's win against Illinois State, making 8-of-18 from the field. Schlueter had scored a total of 20 points in the four games prior to outburst on 7-for-24 (29.2 percent) shooting. She averaged 11.4 points per game at Renaissance Coliseum this season.
Muscatine, Iowa, native Leti Lerma has started each of the last two games in place of the injured Whitney Tinjum (Stacy, Minn./Chisago Lakes/Washington State) and averaged 10.0 points on 53 percent shooting along with 10.5 rebounds and 3.0 steals per game in the two outings last weekend.
Lerma scored her 500th career point Friday against Indiana State and enters Friday's game at Northern Iowa 12 rebounds short of 500 for her career. She would be the 22nd player in program history to collect 500 career points and 500 career rebounds.
After the swing through Iowa, Bradley will finish the regular-season schedule Saturday, March 5 at Loyola.
