Defending Champs Meet Thursday at Missouri State

Defending MVC Tournament champion Bradley meets reigning regular-season Valley champion Missouri State Thursday night at JQH Arena

Josh Schwam

Women's Basketball 1/19/2022 8:39:00 AM

Game 15 \| Bradley Braves (3-11, 0-5 MVC) at Missouri State Bears (12-3, 3-1 MVC)
Date	Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022
Time	7:00 p.m. CT
Location	Springfield, MO
Venue (Capacity)	JQH Arena (11,000)
Social Media	Twitter: @B radleyWBB \| Instagram: @bradley_wbb

For the fifth time in six series matchups against Missouri State, Bradley Women's Basketball will visit JQH Arena when the teams resume their Missouri Valley Conference rivalry Thursday night. The Braves will be looking for their first win of the 2022 calendar year against a Missouri State squad that has won 14 consecutive home games and 18 straight Valley games at JQH Arena dating back to a 70-61 loss to #23 Drake March 3, 2019.

BY THE NUMBERS
1 Freshman guard Caroline Waite enters Thursday's game as the top-scoring freshman in the Valley and first in the MVC by averaging 3.09 3FGM per game.
9 Bradley's roster includes nine newcomers among the team's 15 active student-athletes.
13.6 In the four games since Gabi Haack's season ended, senior guards Tatum Koenig (+7.2) and Chloe Rice (+6.4) have jumped their scoring averages by a combined 13.6 points per game.
28 Through the first 14 games of the season, eight different Braves have combined to miss 28 individual games due to a variety of illnesses and injuries.

SERIES HISTORY
86th Meeting | Missouri State leads, 60-25
• Thursday's game will be the 86th meeting in the all-time women's basketball series between longtime league rivals Bradley and Missouri State.
• The series dates Missouri State's 92-79 Gateway Conference win Jan. 14, 1984 and the teams have played at least twice every year the last 38 years.
• Missouri State has won nine straight in the series, matching the second-longest winning streak in the series history (16, Jan. 15, 1992-Feb. 6, 1997 and 9, Jan. 2, 1998-Dec. 29, 2001).
• Bradley is seeking its first win at JQH Arena since a 75-73 overtime victory Jan. 22, 2017.

SERIES NEWBIES
• With nine first-year student-athletes on the roster and fifth-year senior Gabi Haack on the injury shelf, Bradley's lineup includes just six players who have ever suited up against Missouri State.
• While senior guard Tatum Koenig has played in six games against the Bears, scoring 41 points (6.8 ppg) in 189 cumulative minutes, the other 14 Bradley student-athletes available Thursday night have combined for eight individual games against Missouri State, totaling nine points in 50 cumulative minutes.
• By comparison, Missouri State fifth-year senior guard Bryce Calip alone has played nine career games against Bradley, totaling 254 minutes (28.2 mpg) and 107 points (11.9 ppg).
• Even with veterans Jasmine Franklin and Abby Hipp unavailable due to injury and six newcomers on the Missouri State roster, the Bears still have five student-athletes who have combined to play in 22 individual games against Bradley, racking up 493 minutes and 168 points.

FIVE-OF-SIX AT JQH
• As the luck of the scheduling draw would have it, Bradley is visiting JQH Arena for the fifth time in the last six games of the series.
• The Braves played the second game of the 2018-19 season series at Missouri State, then visited JQH for the first game of the 2019-20 series.
• During the reformatted COVID schedule last season, Bradley visited Missouri State for the back-to-back games in the 2020-21 series.
• Going back to the 2015-16 season, Bradley now is playing at Missouri State for the eighth time in the last 12 regular-season meetings.
• Bradley won three of its first four games at JQH Arena from 2009-12, but Missouri State has rebounded to win nine of its last 10 home games against the Braves.

LOOKING AHEAD
• Bradley will continue its 2-game road swing by visiting Missouri State's MVC travel partner, Southern Illinois Saturday afternoon.
• Since the Missouri State-Southern Illinois travel partner pairing was created upon Wichita State's departure from The Valley following the 2016-17 season, Bradley is seeking its first win on the annual road trip (0-6 from 2018-20).
• Following the trip to Carbondale, Bradley will be home for its next four games, beginning Jan. 27 against Drake for a rematch of the 2021 Hoops in the Heartland MVC Tournament final.
• Bradley has not played four consecutive Valley home games since hosting four straight league games Jan. 26-Feb. 4, 2018.
• The upcoming home stand will represent the eighth four-game conference home stand in program history (two Gateway, six MVC).

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