The Basketball Tournament Midwest regional games Sat. 7/15

[Da Coach]

The Midwest Regional games have started at the Renaissance Coliseum today (Sat. 7/15).
Bracket: https://www.thetournament.com/bracket


In the first game, which started at 9:00 AM, #4 seed Purple and Black (Kansas State alumni) defeated the #13 seed Canton Bulldogs 79-70 to advance to the second round.
Recap-
#4 Purple and Black (Kansas State alumni) 79 #13 Canton Bulldogs 70.

https://www.thetournament.com/bracket/game-4

The second game of the day is currently underway between the # 5 seed Hilton Magic (Iowa State alumni) against the #12 seed Illinois Hoopville Warriors.

In the first half, the Illinois Hoopville Warriors pulled out to a 12 point lead, but now the Hilton Magic (Iowa State alumni) have gone on a 12-2 run to close the lead to 21-19.

http://www.espn.com/watch/player?id=3079356

Former Illinois State player Rico Hill is playing for the Illinois Hoopville Warriors. He was the 1998 MVC Player of the Year and is now 40 years old. He is not hard to miss. He is #42 in the blue uniform, and he has gained a lot of weight since his ISU playing days.



Games can be watched on ESPN3.com-
Link for current games- http://www.espn.com/watch/schedule/

Link for schedule of upcoming games-

http://www.espn.com/watch/schedule?type=upcoming

Link for completed games to watch reply-

http://www.espn.com/watch/schedule?type=replay&startDate=20170715&endDate=20170708

The West Regional is also today, and the first game is just starting at Desert Oasis High School in Las Vegas, Nevada.

https://www.thetournament.com/bracket

[Da Coach]

After racing out to their 12 point early lead, the Illinois Hoopville Wariors appeared to get tired and stopped playing defense and started to settle for long three pointers. The Hilton Magic started driving to the basket and making shots, and dominated the last 10 minutes of the first half. The Hilton Magic scored the last 16 points of the half.
Hilton Magic 49 Illinois Hoopville Warriors 33

http://www.espn.com/watch/player?id=3079356

[Da Coach]

The game between Always a Brave and Mid American Unity is about to tip off a little behind schedule.

[Da Coach]

Exciting game! Always a Brave comes from behind in the 2nd half to win 68-63.

[bigjimmy]

Thought we were fortunate to win but in the end, much like they did last year, they kept their poise late and won. No surprise but the refs were horrible for both teams. Mid American didn't get a call on a potential game tier with 20 seconds to go and after a blocked shot out of bounds with 10 seconds to go the guy from Mid American who blocked the shot expressed himself to one of the refs who quickly T'd him up. Cellus made both FT's to seal the deal.

[tornado]

Exciting game! Always a Brave comes from behind in the 2nd half to win 68-63.

if there's an extra in this game it is that we actually played poorly yet still hustled, made the good defensive plays and hit shots when it mattered..



looking like maybe Always a Brave's Sunday (2:30pm) opponent will be Ft. Wayne Champs..
They lead the Peoria All-Stars at half 44-33

[tornado]

Box score

Cellus with 17 pts, 5 rebs
David Collins with a real spark off the bench - 4 pts, 8 rebs, 3 blocks and a couple nice defensive plays

[Da Coach]

Summary and stats

https://www.thetournament.com/bracket/game-6

[tornado]

Bradley will play the Ft. Wayne Champs who were an 93-76 winner over the Peoria All-Stars

[Da Coach]

The Peoria All Stars lose 93-76 in a game with little defense. So Always a Brave will play the Fort Wayne Champs in round 2 Sunday at 2:30 PM.

https://www.thetournament.com/bracket

[Da Coach]

Video of final sequence

https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/886362555895205889

https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/886362555895205889/video/1

[tornado]

Forgot to mention how great the crowd was...for an off-season game that was not part of a ticket package & the tickets were relatively expensive...
but the place was nearly packed for the AAB game...
There were reports that this was a single-day attendance record for 1st round TBT games..

some nice coverage...

http://newschannel20.com/sports/content/tbt-invades-bradley-university-hoops-scoreboard

https://www.thetournament.com/news/3-always-brave-outscores-14-mid-american-unity-68-63

http://www.journalgazette.net/blog/mad-antics/20170715/former-mad-ants-win-1st-tbt-game

and Bob Hunt has a lot of photos

https://www.facebook.com/bob.hunt.9634/posts/10213284563730761

[Da Coach]

Lawrence Wright was dressed and warmed up with the team, but he was the only player who didn't play at all. He must have had an injury.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213284532289975&set=pcb.10213284563730761&type=3&theater

And here is the box score (scroll down)-

https://www.thetournament.com/bracket/game-6

Always a Brave shot poorly as the stats show. Andrew warren was 0-3, and jerome Randle was 0-7 from three. Even leading scorer Marcellus Sommerville was just 4-13 shooting. Taylor Brown and Andrew Warren, two guys you'd expect to put points on the board, were both scoreless.
As a team, the Braves alumni shot just 36.4% for the game, while the Mid American Unity team shot 47.1% for the game (54.2% in the first half).
What made the biggest difference, IMO, was Always a Brave's deeper bench that gave them an advantage late in the game with energy for playing defense and creating turnovers, and the offensive rebounding. AAB had 15 offensive rebounds to Unity's 5, and the Bradley guys had 17 second chance points to Unity's 0.
For those who didn't watch, there was also a key technical foul on one of the Mid American Unity players in the final minute. Bradley had just come back from a deficit to take a late lead, and the Unity team was trying hard to make one last surge. The ball was knocked out of bounds on Unity's offensive end, and awarded to Bradley. The Unity player went berserk and berated the official, who called the technical. I think Cellus made 1 of 2 FTs, and Bradley got the ball. The refs reviewed video and determined the call was correct. But it appeared to upset and deflate the Unity team.

[tornado]

A couple more interesting points..

-the team we defeated was made up of players who had played in the Mid-American Conference (MAC)
and several were ex-Kent State players who were recruited there and coached at Kent State
...by GENO FORD. Sweet.......

-I saw one tweet by one of their fans kinda griping about being homered by having to play the #3 seed team on "their own home court"

I corrected the guy by saying the Renaissance Coliseum is NOT Bradley's home court, it didn't even exist when those most of those guys played here plus none of them have any familiarity since they haven't played in Peoria in 10-12 years.

If there's a team that got the short end of seeding - what the hey...
Always A Brave nearly won The Tournament last year - denied only by an unfortunate injury to our PG.
We won the Midwest Regional and finished in the Final Four - and yet...
They seeded us 3rd in our own Regional behind two teams we far surpassed last year!
We should have been the top seed!!

-lastly, the Fan Festival was pretty disappointing - mostly just a big empty yard with a couple games that kids could play...
but all the games were $5 each - so a family that had 2 or 3 kids would go bankrupt if they played a few of the games they had.
Even the shaved ice was $5-$7 dollars.

[Da Coach]

The TBT people and the Bradley people did a terrific job running the event yesterday. Other than the games falling a little behind schedule, everything went very well.
Even the seeding was accurate, IMO. The top seeds won all 8 games, and the top 2 seeded teams, the Ohio State alumni and the Marquette alumni, looked like they will be hard to beat.

https://twitter.com/JonMugar/status/886445036732375040