Big News for Bradley Basketball

After talking about the Chicago Bulls and their blunders the past two weeks, I am back to talking about Bradley this week as they had some big news drop last Wednesday. The Braves announced that Guard Mikey Howell is set to join the program for the upcoming season. Howell is a 6-3 Point Guard from San Marcos, California and has played the last 4 seasons at UC San Diego. He finished his career with the Tritons' all-time leader in assists with 502 in 113 career games, helped out by a stellar 2019-2020 season where he dished out 215 assists and averaged 6.9 for the season. Howell is an incredibly efficient player as  well, he shot 40% or better from the field each season and posted back-to-back seasons shooting 40% of better from 3 in 2018-2020. Howell is also a Redshirt-Senior so he is sure to bring some experience and maturity to a Bradley program that is losing key players next season. Even though UC San Diego is a Division-II school, Howell led them to a lot of success. In 2019 they went 30-1 and were ranked as high as #4 nationally and the Tritons' won 3 straight conference titles, in his first 3 years, so he knows how to win and his leadership at Point Guard is something Bradley lacked last year without Darrell Brown. His length at 6-3 also helped him pull down 298 rebounds and jump the passing lanes for steals, he had 134 career steals at UC San Diego. 

Mikey Howell should compete for the starting point guard job from the first day at practice and with starters Ja'Shon Henry, Ville Tahvanianen, Ari Boya, and Rienk Mast all returning that is going to be a big and physical Bradley starting 5. There is also 3 promising young soon to be Sophomores in Jayson Kent, who started 4 games for the Braves and averaged 3.6 PPG, Darrius Hannah, who had the highlight of the season against Drake, and Connor Linke, who played sparingly but looked very solid when he was on the floor, who should give Bradley great depth off of the bench, or even potentially start if any of them make that second year jump. The COVID year was a strange and unexpected won for the Braves but with the players that they have returning and the great job Brian Wardle has done at recruiting, not only getting Howell but in the past in general, this Bradley team could be back to its winning ways next season. And with Porter Moser leaving Loyola-Chicago to coach at Oklahoma and Joseph Yesufu transferring to Kansas, the top 2 teams in the Conference are losing vital pieces to their team so if this Bradley team can resemble the team from 2 years ago I believe the MVC is theirs to take. 

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