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Final score: Illinois State 82 Bradley 71

Da Coach

Da Coach

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Next game: Bradley (21-6, 12-4, 7-2 in road games) at Illinois State (15-12, 7-9, 10-4 at home), Wednesday, Feb. 19, 7:00 pm
The game is on the CBS Sports Network.

Bradley beat ISU in Peoria on Jan. 25, 61-57. After that game, ISU won the next 3 games, but then have lost the last 3.
Recap- https://bradleybraves.com/news/2025...s-improve-to-9-1-in-mvc-and-18-3-overall.aspx
Box score- https://bradleybraves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/2024-25/illinois-state/boxscore/22356

Bradley remains in a tie for 2nd place in the MVC. ISU is in a 5-way tie for 6th place.
Standings - https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/standings/_/group/18

Live Stats- https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=547294
Chat room- https://www.chatzy.com/bradleyfans
Radio- https://wmbdradio.com/player/?playerID=2045
For those planning on going- Tickets - https://goredbirds.evenue.net/event/B24/B15 (Visitors bench is in front of sections 118 & 119)

Illinois State links-
Schedule/results- https://goredbirds.com/sports/mens-basketball/schedule
Roster- https://goredbirds.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster
ISU Historical record- https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb...ois-state/men/
Stats- https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/...om/documents/2025/2/16/20250215_MBB_Stats.pdf

BU stats- https://bradleybraves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats

As of 2/17/25...
Bradley is still the leading team in 3-point field goal percentage (40.7%) - https://www.espn.com/mens-college-b...ffensive/sort/threePointFieldGoalPct/dir/desc
Bradley is 23rd in overall FG% (48.7%) - https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/stats/team/_/table/offensive/sort/fieldGoalPct/dir/desc (note ISU is 22nd)
Bradley is also 23rd in Free Throw percentage (77.6%) - https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/stats/team/_/table/offensive/sort/freeThrowPct/dir/desc

Sortable MVC team stats- https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...oints/dir/desc
MVC Individual stats- https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...yer/_/group/18​
 
This is becoming one of the best races for 1st/2nd place in some time. We have BU and Drake who have been at or near the top since Game 1, and a surging UNI team on a 5-game heater. Good b/c it puts the pressure on us to keep winning. Ultimately, it would be awesome to win the reg. season and take the #1 seed, but I'd be pleased if we snag the #2 seed to avoid playing the last game on Friday night, which might bring fatigue the next day. I don't think there' a real adv. to facing the #7 vs the #6 seed in Arch Madness as the teams from 5th to 9th place are pretty equal.

Click image for larger version Name: Screenshot 2025-02-18 at 10.45.12 AM.png Views: 0 Size: 28.1 KB ID: 525445
 
Anybody else get tix yet?…. If so where’s everybody sitting? Lower bowl is $42 bucks.. last thing I want to do is pay $42 bucks and be next to ISU ppl

lol I’d rather buy extra upper bowl tickets to ensure I have space lol
 
Dubl R 1 said:
Anybody else get tix yet?…. If so where’s everybody sitting? Lower bowl is $42 bucks.. last thing I want to do is pay $42 bucks and be next to ISU ppl

lol I’d rather buy extra upper bowl tickets to ensure I have space lol
Click to expand...

Illinois State is averaging 3,997 per game this season. For most home games, their upper bowl has been mostly empty. No doubt, the Bradley game will be their biggest attendance of the season, but I still expect it to be far from a sellout.

Here are their attendance figures this season-
ISU-attendance.png
 
Dubl R 1 said:
Anybody else get tix yet?…. If so where’s everybody sitting? Lower bowl is $42 bucks.. last thing I want to do is pay $42 bucks and be next to ISU ppl

lol I’d rather buy extra upper bowl tickets to ensure I have space lol
Click to expand...

DR, I’m in 118. The ushers do hawk who can come and go into lower bowl, but if it’s not very full I’m assuming there will be some shuffling and compression so we can make a unified front.
 
Dubl R 1 said:
Anybody else get tix yet?…. If so where’s everybody sitting? Lower bowl is $42 bucks.. last thing I want to do is pay $42 bucks and be next to ISU ppl

lol I’d rather buy extra upper bowl tickets to ensure I have space lol
Click to expand...

Dub and I will be there. Dub bought the tickets so he'll have to chime in with what section they were in. See you there, DR!
 
My wife's company, Country Financial, got a group rate set of tickets for us in section 101, rows 5-8 (we're in 6). Some are BU fans, others are ISU, and a few are just interested in a good game. We're looking forward to a GREAT rivalry game! Go Braves!
 
Vegas has us just as a -1.5 point favorite. Are they factoring in the rivalry? Let down after a big game? Shocked this isn't at least 4-5 point spread. It always worries me seeing lines that don't make a ton of sense.
 
These refs are freaking awful. What in the world did Zek do to get a technical? Tons of garbage calls against our guys trying to guard Walker too.
 
If we don’t win Arch Madness, I think many Bradley fans will consider this season a major underachievement.

It is not a coincidence that teams are shooting 3s at a high percentage against us. Our help defense flow needs to be adjusted before St Louis.
 
Every time we almost dig ourselves out of this being a disappointing season, we come out and lay an egg. Terrible defensive rotations and weak side defense falling asleep. Duke was awful, including back to back terrible turnovers in a crucial stretch until his shooting show in the last quarter of the game. Davis looked off most of it. Zek was ok on offense, but not on defense again. For all the declaring Almar and Burch back after a good game or two, Almar has went right back to making terrible mistakes and being inconsistent after his one breakout game and Burch loses focus defensively too often and thus can’t keep himself on the floor to give us his offense. Hannah was ok I guess. I thought we should have went to him against Walker more.

As someone mentioned, and this was probably true before tonight, this season will be decided by winning Arch Madness or not. At least that’s how I feel. I don’t love putting all of our eggs in that basket, but it’s where we are now. We have to close strong to get ready for it. Again, this is a pretty good team, but I just thought we should have been a really good team this year. Hate losing to Illinois State, but I think Pedon has them being a good team sooner than later.
 
Bradley8792 said:
Refs aren’t the problem. Giving up 20 points of turnovers is the problem.
Click to expand...


Yep. Bradley played pretty well on offense, and only had 9 turnovers, but ISU scored 20 points off those 9 turnovers.
They shot 44.3% overall, and 40.0% from three (10-25).
And BU shot 53.1% in the 2nd half, but could never catch up to Illinois State due to a couple factors:
1) defensive lapses- failure to guard Daugherty, a one-dimensional 3 point shooter- a career-high 25 points, 7-10 from three.

2) Some absurd calls- the technical foul on Zek, and a lot of gift fouls resulting in 23 total fouls on BU and 27 free throws for ISU, compared to just 11 for Bradley. A 16 free throw differential in a game that ISU won by 11 points.

Final score- Illinois State 82 Bradley 71
Final stats- https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=547294

MVC Standings after 17 games - https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/standings/_/group/18

2-19.png
 
We just get in those modes that we fail to recognize where a teams 3 point shooters are. In this day and age of the 3 your attention must be locked in on those shooters. Credit to ISU for finding Daugherty but you just can't allow a guy to get into double digit land from 3. It's all about basic execution and too often that hasn't been the case. Based on what Brian said in his brief comments on the post game show I would expect our execution to be more focused on Saturday
 
Btw, the attendance for ISU's biggest game of the year tonight was a season-high 5,719.
That included hundreds of Bradley fans, along with a huge student crowd who were there with free admission.
That is about what Bradley's MVC-leading average home attendance is for the season (5,691).
 
I missed the part of the game with Zek's T, what happened?

As for the 3s, in the second half they were running a lot of screens and high post sets with Walker. I felt like we were too concerned with Walker beating our guys one on one that we were helping a ton
 
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