Women’s Basketball Opens Valley Slate At Drake

Evan Temchin

Women's Basketball 12/30/2020 9:58:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. -- After a two-week break from competition, Bradley Women's Basketball gets back on the court to open the Missouri Valley Conference portion of the schedule later this week; with the Braves heading to Des Moines, Iowa, for a weekend series at Drake Friday and Saturday.

Friday's MVC opener against the Bulldogs (2-5 overall) will tip off at 2 p.m. at the Knapp Center, while Saturday's contest is slated to start at noon. Both games will be available on ESPN+ and BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats and the WIRL 1290 AM radio broadcast.

The Braves (4-3 overall) will be playing its first road game since the Dec. 6 outing at Saint Louis, while Drake has played just one home game this season (Dec. 2 against Iowa).

Bradley and Drake split the regular-season series last year, with the home team winning each contest. The Braves will be trying to snap a 10-game road losing streak in the series with Drake that dates back to a 61-58 victory on Jan. 24, 2010. Bradley has not played a January road game in the series since 2013-14.

Bradley will play its MVC opener in the state of Iowa for the first time since 2007-08 (UNI) and has not played at Drake to start league play dating back to the 1997-98 campaign. In fact, the Braves have started conference action against Drake six previous times, but the 1997-98 season is the only time BU faced the Bulldogs on the road to start the Valley schedule.

West Branch, Iowa, native Tatum Koenig has enjoyed trips to her home state; scoring in double figures in three of her four road games played in the Hawkeye State. In fact, last year she averaged 16.0 points and 2.5 steals per game, while shooting 11-for-20 from the field and 8-for-14 from three-point range in the road games against Drake and Northern Iowa. Koenig, who is 26th in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio this year, averaged 13.8 points per game on 20-of-31 (64.5%) shooting in her four games against teams from the state of Iowa in 2019-20, which included 13-of-20 from three-point range. Four of her 10 career double-digit scoring performances have been against opponents from her home state.

Senior Gabi Haack has certainly had her fair share of success against Drake, averaging 19.0 points per game in six career games against the Bulldogs. In fact, Haack has scored 13 or more points in all six career outings vs. Drake and is the only player in Bradley history to average better than 15.0 ppg in the series. She enters the conference-opening series with 114 career points against the Bulldogs and needs just four points to break the Bradley career scoring mark vs. Drake of 117 shared by Sara Bailey (10 games) and Shelli Braud (eight games). In addition, Haack's 25 career made three-pointers (25-for-51) is already more three-pointers than any Bradley player vs. any MVC opponent all-time.

Junior Lasha Petree scored her 1,000th-career point in Bradley's outing against South Dakota and Haack broke into the top 10 in career scoring at Bradley Dec. 18 against Quincy. Petree became the 21st Brave to reach the 1,000-point mark with her 23-point effort against South Dakota and is currently 19th in career scoring at BU with 1,022 points. She is the fourth Brave to reach 1,000 career points in fewer than 70 games, topping the mark in her 65th career outing (fourth fastest in program history), and is just 41 points from jumping into 15th on BU's scoring list.

The MVC's active career scoring leader, Haack passed Genny Mueller for 10th on Bradley's all-time scoring chart and has 1,275 career points heading into the MVC portion of the schedule, 39 points from moving into ninth in Bradley history. In addition, Haack is seven made three-pointers from climbing into the top 20 in MVC history for three-point field goals.

The Braves follow up the weekend series at Drake with a home series against Southern Illinois, Jan. 8 & 9 at Renaissance Coliseum.

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Players Mentioned

#3 Gabi Haack: G; 5' 10"; Senior

#13 Tatum Koenig: G; 5' 7"; Junior

#11 Lasha Petree: G; 6' 0"; Junior

Players Mentioned

#3 Gabi Haack
: 5' 10"; Senior
: G

#13 Tatum Koenig
: 5' 7"; Junior
: G

#11 Lasha Petree
: 6' 0"; Junior
: G

Women’s Basketball Opens Valley Slate At Drake

Players Mentioned

#3 Gabi Haack

#13 Tatum Koenig

#11 Lasha Petree

Players Mentioned

#3 Gabi Haack

#13 Tatum Koenig

#11 Lasha Petree