Road Heavy Stretch Ends Saturday at SIU

Bradley Women's Basketball will play on the road for the 10th time in 13 games when the visit the Salukis Saturday

Josh Schwam

Women's Basketball 1/21/2022 2:28:00 PM

Game 16 \| Bradley Braves (3-12, 0-6 MVC) at Southern Illinois Salukis (9-6, 4-1 MVC)
Date	Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022
Time	2:00 p.m. CT
Location	Carbondale, IL
Venue (Capacity)	Banterra Center (8,294)
Social Media	Twitter: @B radleyWBB \| Instagram: @bradley_wbb

For the fifth time in the first seven league games of the Missouri Valley Conference season, Bradley's youthful squad will play on the road, when the Braves visit in-state rival Southern Illinois Saturday afternoon at Banterra Center. Saturday's game will be Bradley's 10th road game in 13 outings since the Braves swept their season-opening, three-game home stand Nov. 9-19.

BY THE NUMBERS
1 – Bradley freshman guard Caroline Waite enters Saturday's game as the top scoring freshman in The Valley at 12.2 ppg and first overall in the MVC by averaging 2.8 3-point field goals per game, but Waite was held scoreless and without a trey (0-2) for the first time in her her young career Thursday night at Missouri State.

6.1 – Senior guard Tatum Koenig has made the biggest scoring jump on the team in the five games since the program's all-time leading scorer, fifth-year senior guard Gabi Haack, went down with her season-ending knee injury Jan. 1 at Illinois State. Averaging 7.5 ppg in the season's first 10 games and a career 6.8 ppg scorer, Koenig has pumped in 13.6 ppg in the last five games.

9 – Bradley is the "newest" team in The Valley with a roster that includes nine first-year Braves – six freshmen, one NCAA Division 1 transfer and two junior college transfers – among the squad's 15 active student-athletes.

31 – Through the first 15 games of the season, eight different Braves have combined to miss 31 individual games due to a variety of illnesses and injuries. As a result, Bradley has utilized nine different starting lineups in the last 11 games.

SERIES HISTORY
82nd Meeting | Southern Illinois leads, 52-29
The series against in-state rival Southern Illinois has been played entirely as conference rivals, beginning with a Gateway Conference Tournament matchup Feb. 27, 1983 in Carbondale, an 81-52 Salukis win … Southern Illinois owns a 52-29 series advantage, including a 29-11 edge in Carbondale … Bradley has won three straight in the series, but all three of those games were played in Peoria … Southern Illinois has won seven consecutive home games in the series since Bradley's 77-61 victory March 1, 2013 at Banterra Center.

COACHING CONNECTIONS
There are no shortage of coaching connections to the Bradley-Southern Illinois series between Bradley head coach Andrea Gorski and SIU leader Cindy Stein … Gorski was a Hall of Fame point guard at Bradley from 1988-92, while Stein was an assistant coach for the Braves (1988-93) … When Stein took over the SIU program in 2013, she brought Gorski on as her associate head coach for the three years (2013-16) before Gorski took over the Bradley program … Stein is a Peoria native and played with former Bradley head coach Paula Buscher at both Richwoods High School and Illinois Central College.

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 Southern Illinois … While senior guard Tatum Koenig has played in six games against the Salukis, scoring 27 points (4.5 ppg) in 218 cumulative minutes, the other 14 Bradley student-athletes available Saturday afternoon have combined for 10 individual games against Southern Illinois, totaling 20 points in 66 cumulative minutes … Senior guard Chloe Rice, who contributed 13 of those points in 23 minutes in her two games against SIU as a Brave last season, also scored an additional four points in 11 minutes against the Salukis during her freshman season (2018-19) at Saint Louis, helping the Billikens to a 62-58 win … By comparison, the SIU roster includes six seniors (four of the graduate variety) and nine student-athletes who have combined for 40 individual games against Bradley with 274 points in 825 minutes … Makenzie Silvey alone boasts 128 points (16.0 ppg) in 228 minutes (28.5 mpg) in her eight career games against the Braves.

SENIOR STEPPING UP
In the five games since Gabi Haack's season-ending injury, senior point guard Tatum Koenig has been Bradley's most consistent contributor to make up for Haack's offensive void … Koenig, who had averaged 6.8 points per game with 20 career double-digit scoring efforts in her 98 games before Haack's injury, has scored in double figures in four of Bradley's last five games while averaging 13.6 ppg in Haack's absence … Koenig matched her career-best with 23 points Jan. 15 against Valparaiso and led the Braves with 12 points Thursday at Missouri State … In the first six games of 2022, Koenig is shooting 13-for-29 (.448) from 3-point range, improving her career percentage to .394, the third-best 3-point field goal percentage in program history.

LOOKING AHEAD
After playing five of its first seven Missouri Valley Conference games on the road, as well as 10 of its last 13 games overall, Bradley will open a four-game home stand Thursday (6:30 pm) by welcoming Drake to Renaissance Coliseum for this year's first rematch of the 2021 Hoops in the Heartland MVC Tournament championship game … 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 just the eighth four-game conference home stand in program history (two in the Gateway Conference and six in the MVC) … The Braves also will host UNI Jan. 29 (2 p.m.) to close the first half of the MVC season, then will welcome Indiana State Feb. 4 and Evansville Feb. 6 to start the second trip around the league schedule.

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