Birds Bury Braves on the Road

This 2020-2021 season continued to slip away from the Bradley Braves after they suffered another Missouri Valley Conference loss last Thursday to I-74 Rival the Illinois State Redbirds. The Braves started out the game very sluggish and allowed Illinois State to jump out to a quick 8-0 lead. Ja'Shon Henry, who was cleared from investigation and was allowed to play, scored Bradley's only basket until a Sean East II 3-pointer with 15:04 left to play made it 13-5. Bradley stretch that run to 8-0 and cut the Redbird lead to 13-10. After ISU's Howard Fleming Jr. and Ja'Shon Henry traded jump shots Bradley found themselves down only 3 with 11:41 left in the first half. This was a game full of mini-runs and Illinois State would go on another one over the next 3 minutes that was capped off with a thunderous dunk Josiah Strong that would put the Redbirds up 21-12. Freshman Forward Connor Linke gave the Braves a surge off the bench and scored 5 straight points to end the ISU run. A Rienk Mast jumper and a Kevin McAdoo 3 would all of a sudden bring the Braves within a single point at 23-22 with 5:09 remaining. Josiah Strong, who had a big first half for Illinois State, would bury a triple that gave them a 6 point lead, a lead that they would carry into halftime 35-32. The Redbirds were paced by Josiah Strong and Antonio Reeves, who had 10 and 11 points and combined to go 5-10 from beyond the arc. Rienk Mast led Bradley in the first half with 10 points and Ja'Shon Henry chipped in a much needed 9 points. 

The second half saw more scoring from both teams and started out very back and forth. Both teams would trade baskets for the first 3 minutes and after Ville Tahvanainen split a pair of free throws at the line Bradley went into the under 16 media timeout trailing 45-41. Right out of the timeout Kevin McAdoo would get open and nail a triple to put Bradley back down 1 and within striking distance to take their first lead of the game. The Braves would tie the game a minute later after a McAdoo free throw made it 49-49 with 13:46 remaining in the ball game. Just when you thought things were starting to get interesting, the Redbirds responded with an 11-0 run led by Josiah Strong and Emon Washington that gave them control for the rest of the game. Bradley's Ja'Shon Henry and Darius Hannah would try and stop the bleeding and scored back-to-back baskets to cut the deficit back under double digits. But Dedric Boyd would hit a big 3 that put ISU up 65-53 with 9 minutes left and the Braves would never get the deficit under 11 points. With 4:03 left a tip-in by Abdou Ndiaye extended the lead to 17 points and it put the finishing touches on what was a great performance on the road for the Redbirds. The final score would be 88-71 with Illinois State having 4 players score 13 or more points, led by Emon Washington's 20 points and 8 rebounds. Everyone who saw minutes for the Braves scored in this game and Ja'Shon Henry, Rienk Mast, and Kevin McAdoo all scored in double figures for Bradley. The victory moved ISU to 7-15 overall and 4-12 in the MVC. The loss dropped Bradley to 11-14 overall and 5-11 in the MVC.