ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Bradley Women's Basketball has been picked to finish fourth in the Missouri Valley Conference pre-season poll according to a vote of the league's coaches, sports information directors and media announced Thursday to mark the highest the Braves have been picked in the preseason tabulation since 1991-92.
Coming off the second 20-win season at the NCAA Division I level in program history along with the team's best MVC finish (5th) in nearly a decade, Bradley returns a pair of First-Team All-Valley performers and for the first time in school history boast three returning players which scored 12.5 points per game or more the previous year.
The Braves earned 255 points in the poll to outdistance fifth-place Southern Illinois (235) by 20 points. Defending MVC regular-season champion Drake received 31 of 40 first-place votes and topped the poll with 359 points. Missouri State, which claimed the MVC Tournament title and reached the NCAA Sweet 16 last year, was second with 329 points and garnered eight of the nine remaining first-place selections. Northern Iowa earned one first-place selection and was third in the vote at 297 points, 42 ahead of Bradley.
One of just two Valley teams to return a pair of First-Team All-MVC performers in senior forward Chelsea Brackmann and junior guard Gabi Haack along with defending champion Drake, the Braves will also be bolstered by the return of 2018-19 MVC Freshman of the Year Lasha Petree. The trio help highlight a roster which features four returning starters among the nine letterwinners back from the first 20-win team since 2008-09.
Overall, Bradley's returners combined for nearly 56 points and 29 rebounds per game last, with both totals fourth among MVC teams heading into the 2019-20 season.
Haack paced Bradley in scoring at 14.9 points per game for the highest scoring average by a Brave dating back to 2001-02 and was the eighth player to lead the team in both scoring and assists in the same season. In fact, Haack was one of 10 players in the country and just the fourth in the MVC since 1995-96 to make 69 three-pointers, 120 free throws and pull down at least 160 rebounds.
Brackmann pulled down a Bradley season record 327 rebounds and paced the MVC in rebounding at 10.9 boards per contest. She was 21st in the nation in rebounding and collected 16 double-doubles as a junior. Brackmann was the first MVC player since 2011-12 to tally 375 points, 325 rebounds, 35 assists, 30 blocks and 45 or more steals in a season (one of seven in the nation in 2018-19).
Petree, who was also named MVC Sixth Player of the Year last year as a frosh, was the highest scoring freshman in the MVC since Drake's Sara Rhine in 2015-16 at 13.2 points per outing. She had a late season surge, which saw her average 14.6 points per contest over the final 10 games.
Sophomore Tatum Koenig started the final 15 games and the point guard averaged 6.1 points and 2.9 assists per outing as a starter.
While Bradley isn't lacking for experience, the Braves boast what is a relatively young lineup with Brackmann the only 2019-20 senior to appear in the starting lineup last year and the returning players combing for nearly 80 percent of last year's starts.
In addition to the returners, three freshmen had the opportunity to make the team's summer foreign exhibition tour to Portugal in August. The new faces on the Bradley bench include 5-11 guard Mahri Petree, the younger sister of Lasha, 6-2 forward Veronika Roberts and 5-8 guard Violeta Verano from Spain, who is the fifth international player in program history.
Bradley will play its only exhibition game of 2019-20 when the Braves host Illinois-Springfield Sunday, Nov. 3 in a 2 p.m. game at Renaissance Coliseum before opening the regular-season schedule Friday, Nov. 8 at Oakland.
