Bradley Women Visit UNI Friday

The Braves will start their final road swing of the regular season Friday night at UNI

Josh Schwam

Women's Basketball 2/24/2022 7:54:00 AM

Game 25 \| Bradley Braves (4-20, 1-14 MVC) at UNI Panthers (16-9, 9-5 MVC)
Date	Friday, Feb. 25, 2022
Time	6:00 p.m. CT
Location	Cedar Falls, IA
Venue (Capacity)	McLeod Center (6,650)
Social Media	Twitter: @B radleyWBB \| Instagram: @bradley_wbb

Bradley Women's Basketball will make its final road swing of the 2021-22 regular season this weekend by visiting Missouri Valley Conference rivals Northern Iowa Friday night and Drake Sunday afternoon. The weekend road swing will serve as a bit of a homecoming for the five Bradley team members from the state of Iowa, four of whom rank as the team's top five season scoring leaders.

BY THE NUMBERS
1 - Freshman guard Caroline Waite enters Friday's game as the top-scoring underclassman (Fr/So) in the Valley at 12.6 ppg and the league leader in 3FGM/gm (2.67).
5 - Bradley's roster includes five student-athletes from the state of Iowa, including four of the team's top five scorers to date this season.
11 - Bradley senior guard Tatum Koenig has scored in double figures in 11 consecutive games, the longest double-digit scoring streak of her career.
15 - Bradley has utilized 15 different starting lineups this season, all within a 20-game stretch, the most of any team in the nation this year.

SERIES NOTES
84th Meeting - UNI leads, 46-37
• The series between the Braves and Panthers dates to the launch of the Gateway Conference in 1983-84, when Bradley swept the 2-game, home-and-home series, 104-55 at BU and 77-76 at UNI.
• Bradley had the upper hand through the first 15 years of the rivalry, posting a 25-5 record against UNI from 1983-98.
• Since the start of the 1998-99 season, however, UNI owns a 41-12 series advantage, including a 20-2 home record against Bradley.
• The Braves are seeking their first-ever win at McLeod Center and will be trying to snap a 16-game overall road losing streak in the series, dating to a 53-53 win Jan. 17, 2004 at UNI's West Gym.
• Bradley won 2-of-3 meetings against UNI last season, including its first-ever postseason win against the Panthers in the quarterfinals of the Hoops in the Heartland MVC Women's Basketball Championship.

SERIES NEWBIES
• With seven first-year student-athletes available for action and four Braves on the injured list, including fifth-year senior Gabi Haack, Bradley's lineup includes just five players who have ever appeared in more than just this season's previous meeting against UNI.
• Senior guard Tatum Koenig has played in eight games against the Panthers, scoring 67 points (8.4 ppg) in 290 cumulative minutes.
• The other 11 Bradley student-athletes available Friday night have combined for 32 individual games against UNI, totaling 51 points.
• With Koenig, Bradley's cumulative series numbers are 40 individual games, 487 minutes, 118 points, 86 rebounds and 32 assists against the Panthers.
• On the other side, UNI's roster includes 13 student-athletes who have played a combined 67 individual games against Bradley, accumulating 381 points in 1178 minutes.

THE HAWKEYE FIVE
• Bradley's final road trip of the season will serve as somewhat of a homecoming for the team's five student-athletes from the state of Iowa.
• Entering Friday's game at UNI, four of the team's top five scorers are from The Hawkeye State:
Student-Athlete (Yr • Pos) Iowa Hometown PPG Rk
Caroline Waite (Fr. • G) Ames 12.6 1
Tatum Koenig (Sr. • G) West Branch 12.2 2
Abbie Draper (Fr. • F) Waverly 5.6 4
Chloe Rice (Sr. • G) Marion 4.8 5
Sasha Koenig (Fr. • G) West Branch 0.5

EXPERIENCE FACTOR
• Fifth-year senior Gabi Haack, the all-time leading scorer and 3-point shooter in program history, saw her season come to an end Jan. 1 at Illinois State when she suffered a torn ACL in her left knee with 6:00 remaining.
• With Haack no longer available, senior guard Tatum Koenig stands as Bradley's most-experienced player and the team's active leader in most every career category.
• With three more Braves - junior guard Diamond Cannon, freshman guard Nika Dorsey and sophomore forward Daija Powell - also out for the remainder of the year due to injury, Bradley's 12-player active roster includes nine first-year (6) and second-year (3) Braves.
• While Koenig has been the starting point guard in 95 of her 112 career games, the other 11 student-athletes on the active roster have combined for 78 starts in 344 individual games played (28.7 games per player) at BU.
• While Koenig has logged 3,401 career minutes, the other 11 active Braves have combined for 4,103 minutes at Bradley.
• Friday opponent UNI has 13 student-athletes who have combined for 1,018 individual games and more than 17,000 minutes played, including the trio of fifth-year seniors Bre Gunnels, Nicole Kroeger and Karli Rucker, who alone have combined for nearly 2,000 more minutes (9,735) than the entire 13-player Bradley active roster (7,972).
NCAA Division I Experience
Team Roster Games Starts Minutes
Bradley 12 509 174 7,504
UNI 13 1018 418 17,449

15 LINEUPS
• Bradley's 15 different starting five combinations are the most for any team in the nation this season.
• The Braves used the same lineup for each of the season's first five games and used the 15th lineup during both games of last week's home stand.
• The 15 different combos were used in a 19-game stretch of the season from Nov. 26-Feb. 18.

SIX-IN-NINE
• Bradley has not had more than six student-athletes score in any of its last five games.
• Bradley's starters have accounted for 445 of the team's 500 points (89.0 percent) in the last nine games.
• No more than one bench player had scored in seven consecutive games Jan. 22-Feb. 12 until two reserves each game have contributed to the 17 total bench points of the last two games.
• Caroline Waite's 23 points off the bench Feb. 4 against Indiana State account for 41.8 percent of Bradley's 55 bench points the last nine games.
Game (Scorers) Result Starters Bench Starting%
J22 at SIU (6) L, 53-41 39 2 .951
J27 vs DU (6) L, 80-56 54 2 .964
J29 vs UNI (6) L, 60-36 34 2 .944
F4 vs INS (6) L, 83-63 40 23 .635
F6 vs UE (6) W, 77-67 74 3 .961
F10 at VU (6) L, 86-84 80 4 .952
F12 at LUC (5) L, 56-41 39 2 .951
F18 vs SIU (6) L, 74-46 35 11* .761
F20 vs MSU (6) L, 72-56 50 6* .893
Last 9 games 500 pts 445 55 .890

FLIP OF THE CALENDAR, FLIP OF THE SWITCH
• Since the calendar flipped to 2022, Bradley senior point guard Tatum Koenig has turned into a scoring machine for the Braves.
• The transition was largely necessitated by Gabi Haack's season-ending knee injury suffered Jan. 1 with six minutes remaining at Illinois State, but Koenig's offensive surge started with 12 points that day.
• Koenig had averaged 6.7 points per game with 19 double-digit scoring efforts in her first 97 career games.
• In the 15 games since the calendar flipped to 2022, however, Koenig has scored in double figures 14 times and is the league's fourth-leading scorer at 15.3 ppg.
• Heading into the Jan. 1 game at Illinois State, Koenig ranked 39th among The Valley's 2021-22 scoring leaders at 7.0 points per game.
• Now 15 games later, heading into Friday's game versus Southern Illinois, Koenig has climbed 27 spots on the league's scoring list to rank 12th at 12.2 ppg.
MVC Scoring Leaders Dec. 31 PPG Feb. 25 PPG
Tatum Koenig 39th 7.0 12th 12.2

CHASING COACH G
• Senior guard Tatum Koenig ranks fifth in program history with 349 career assists and ninth with 136 career 3-point field goals.
• Bradley head coach Andrea Gorski, who was a Hall-of-Fame guard for the Braves from 1988-92, is immediately ahead of Koenig on both lists - fourth with 360 assists and eighth with 149 treys.

WHO HOLDS THE TITLE?
• Bradley has three options to choose from for 2021-22 team scoring leader.
• Fifth-year guard Gabi Haack averaged 17.1 ppg in her 10 games before suffering her season-ending injury.
• Senior guard Tatum Koenig leads the Braves with 293 total points (12.2 ppg).
• Freshman guard Caroline Waite has missed three games due to illness, but has averaged 12.6 ppg with 264 total points in her 21 games to date.

FROM THE LINE
• While Bradley is 10th in The Valley by shooting an even 70 percent from the free throw line in league play (that in and of itself is a note), the team's top four at getting to the line are shooting at an efficient clip.
• In league play, the quartet of Caroline Waite (.852), Tatum Koenig (.836), Abbie Draper (.750) and Chloe Rice (.711) are Bradley's four most-frequent visitors to the line, where they are a combined 135-of-170 (.794).
• In her seven non-conference games, Waite was just 5-of-9 (.556) from the charity stripe, but since league play began, she has made 23-of-27 attempts.
• Through the first 97 games of her career, senior guard Tatum Koenig was a career 69.8 percent free throw shooter who had averaged 1.8 FTA per game.
• In Bradley's 15 Valley games this season, Koenig is 61-of-73 from the stripe and her 4.87 FTA per game are the most among the league's most-accurate free throw shooters in league play.
• Freshman forward Abbie Draper (1-3) and senior guard Chloe Rice (3-5) were a combined 4-of-8 from the free throw line in Bradley's nine non-conference games.
2021-22 Non-Con Pct. FTA/g MVC Pct. FTA/g
Tatum Koenig 13-20 .650 2.2 61-73 .836 4.9
Caroline Waite 5-9 .556 1.3 23-27 .852 1.9
Abbie Draper 1-3 .333 0.3 24-32 .750 2.5
Chloe Rice 3-5 .600 0.6 27-38 .711 2.7

LOOKING AHEAD
• Bradley will play its final road game of the 2021-22 regular season Sunday afternoon at Drake.
• Following Sunday's road finale, the Braves will close out the regular season by hosting I-74 rival Illinois State Saturday, March 5 at Renaissance Coliseum.
• Bradley's senior quartet of Gabi Haack, Aannah Interrante, Tatum Koenig and Chloe Rice will be honored in a pregame ceremony March 5 as the Braves celebrate their annual Senior Day.
• The 2022 Hoops in the Heartland MVC Women's Basketball Championship tips off March 10.

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