Braves Host Oakland Saturday Afternoon

Women's Basketball 11/30/2018 9:57:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. -- Bradley Women's Basketball looks to push its win streak to six games when the Braves host Horizon League member Oakland Saturday for a 1 p.m. game at Renaissance Coliseum for the second of a three-game home stand before the finals break.

With the holiday season in full swing, Saturday's home game against Oakland will mark Kaboom!'s Holiday Party at Renaissance Coliseum. Kaboom! will be available for holiday pictures and a special station to make holiday cards will be on the concourse during the game. In addition, a children's gift exchange will be held with participants asked to bring a wrapped gift. Saturday's promotions also include a special halftime performance by the XPOGO Stunt Team.

Saturday's game will be available on ESPN+ (subscription required). Ed Hammond will handle the play-by-play on the WIRL 1290 AM radio broadcast and BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats along with both the video and audio streams.

Bradley is the lone undefeated team in the Missouri Valley Conference at 5-0 after a 67-64 victory over Eastern Illinois Wednesday. The Braves are 5-0 to open a season for just the second time in program history, with the 2001-02 squad's 9-0 start ranking as the best in Bradley history.

A first-time opponent for Bradley, Oakland (2-5 overall) is coming off a 62-56 loss at Valley rival Illinois State Thursday night. Saturday's game is the first of two this season for Bradley against teams from the Horizon League. The Braves are 10-9 in the last 19 games against Horizon League foes, which includes a 4-3 mark under third-year head coach Andrea Gorski. Bradley has played at least one home game against a Horizon League team in 14 of the last 16 years and boasts at least one home victory against the Horizon League in 11 of those 14 years. In fact, Bradley is 16-6 in its last 16 home games against a team from the Horizon League.

Bradley has won six consecutive non-conference regular-season games dating back to last season for the longest non-conference win streak in a decade when the Braves won the final four non-conference contests of 2007-08 and opened the 2008-09 campaign with back-to-back wins. A victory Saturday against Oakland would mark the first six-game win streak at Bradley since a six-game MVC win streak during the 2009-10 season. The Braves picked up five wins in the month of November for the first time since 2011-12 (5-3), which was the last time the Braves reached the post season. The 2011-12 team finished the year with an 18-16 overall record and fell to Minnesota in the second round of the Women's Basketball Invitational.

In addition to ranking as the top defensive unit in the conference, Bradley is the top rebounding team in the MVC at 42.2 boards per game. Junior Chelsea Brackmann is second in the MVC in rebounding at 9.0 per game and has collected eight or more boards in four of five contests. Bradley is 22-9 during Gorski's tenure when holding a rebounding advantage, which includes a 15-4 record in the last 19 contests the Braves had an advantage on the glass.

Sophomore Gabi Haack hit 5-of-10 three-pointers and scored a game-high 23 points in Wednesday's victory against Eastern Illinois. Haack, who is averaging a league-best 18.6 points per game, is eighth in the nation in three-point field goals per game (3.80) and is one of three players in the country through games of Nov. 28 to have more than three-point makes (19) than their team has allowed (13). Her six more makes than Bradley's opponents this season are by far the best in the country with Tiara Scott of Sacramento State and D'Aviyon Magazine of St. Peter's both owning one more triple than their squads have surrendered.

Haack has hit five three-pointers or more in five of her last seven games dating back to last year's MVC Tournament, shooting 29-for-58 (50 percent) from beyond the arc during that stretch. Her 19 three-pointers are the most by a Bradley player in the first five games of a season since Michelle Lund was 19-for-40 in the first five outings of 2008-09.

The Braves close out a three-game home stand Tuesday with the team's annual Field Trip Day presented by Prairie Farms. Bradley will host in-state foe Western Illinois in a special 11 a.m. contest in BU's final game before semester finals.

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