Braves Head To Iowa For Final Road Swing

Daryl Wilson

Women's Basketball 2/21/2018 11:31:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. – Bradley Women's Basketball will head to the state of Iowa for the final road swing of the 2017-18 regular season, facing defending Missouri Valley Conference champion and current league leader Drake Friday at 7 p.m. in Des Moines, Iowa, in addition to a Sunday afternoon (2 p.m.) tilt with Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to conclude the road schedule.

The Braves (12-14 overall, 6-9 MVC) are 4-3 in MVC road games this season with only Drake (19-7 overall, 14-0 MVC) and Missouri State (7) owning more road league victories in 2017-18. With three games remaining in the regular season Bradley sits one game behind I-74 rival Illinois State, which also plays at UNI (13-12 overall, 9-5 MVC) and Drake this weekend, for sixth in the MVC standings. The Braves will be trying to win at least five conference road games for the first time since head coach Andrea Gorski's senior year when BU was 6-3 on the road during the final year of the Gateway Conference (1991-92).

Both games will be available on ESPN3 as part of the MVC media rights agreement with ESPN. The Valley On ESPN3 can be viewed through WatchESPN.com and the WatchESPN app. In addition, Ed Hammond will handle the radio broadcast of both contests. Friday's game will be available on WIRL 1290 AM, while Sunday's matchup with Northern Iowa airs on WMBD 1470 AM with links to the audio streams available at BradleyBraves.com

Senior Anneke Schlueter enters the weekend poised to become the 18th player in program history to score 1,000 career points, needing seven to reach the mark. The last Brave to reach 1,000 career points was Michelle Young during the 2014-15 campaign. Schlueter is currently 18th in Bradley history with 993 career points and is closing in on fifth in career three-pointers, needing three trey's to pass BU head coach Andrea Gorski's career total of 148 career three-pointers.

Bradley has had a fair number of close calls in Valley play with the Braves owning a 1-5 record in league games decided by nine points or less. Among those five losses, Bradley has either held a fourth-quarter lead or trailed by three points or less inside of seven minutes to play in all but one contest. In fact, among BU's nine league losses this season the Braves have either led in the fourth quarter (3x) or trailed by six points or fewer inside of eight minutes to play a total of six times in league play and a total of nine times overall among the 14 setbacks.

Freshman Gabi Haack celebrated her birthday Sunday against Indiana State in a big way, tossing in 19 points and grabbing eight rebounds against the Sycamores. Haack, who hit three three-pointers in the first four minutes of the game and finished 4-for-8 from beyond the arc, hit her 50th three-pointer of the season in the outing. Haack has joined Bradley Hall of Fame member Heather Best as the only players in program history with 50 three-pointers and 150 rebounds in a season. In fact, she is just the third Missouri Valley Conference freshman since 1996-97 with those numbers, joining last year's MVC Player of the Year Lizzy Wendell (Drake), who did so as a freshman in 2013-14, and the 2016-17 MVC Freshman of the Year Becca Hittner (Drake) to reach those marks.

Haack's team-high 261 points (10.0 ppg) rank 10th among Bradley freshman marks, while her 158 rebounds rank as the fifth-best total by a BU freshman as she has helped lead Bradley's youth movement this season. Bradley's freshmen have combined for 550 points (21.2 ppg) and provided 31.7 percent of the Braves' scoring this season, surpassed in the MVC by only Loyola (55.2 percent) and Southern Illinois (35.7 percent).

In fact, newcomers including junior college transfer Shunseere Kent have totaled 779 points or nearly 45 percent of Bradley's scoring. The group of six newcomers is a combined 85-for-238 (35.7 percent) from three-point range and connected on nearly 60 percent of the team's treys.

Bradley follows up the weekend trip with the final home game of the season when the Braves host I-74 rival Illinois State Saturday, March 3 in a 2 p.m. game at Renaissance Coliseum.

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