New season begins - Bradley opens up 2018-19 with an exhibition win

Bradley men's basketball headed to London on July 29 to enjoy the sights and food and to play some pre-season exhibition basketball.

The first game was Tuesday July 31 - possibly the earliest they have ever played a preseason game.

Since there was next to zero coverage for Bradley in the preseason by the local media (altho Kurt Pegler & WMBD had some fine coverage) I will document the details of their games.
I was able to locate a link to a live audio stream and post it before the game so numerous Bradley fans were able to see the link, log on and listen to the play-by-play from the British announcers who generally cover the opponent, the Surrey Scorchers - a team in the BBL (top pro league in England).

The game topped off at 7:30pm local time and 1:30pm Peoria time.
Bradley took a very quick lead courtesy of sophomore Elijah Childs hitting a 3-pointer and driving layup.  Bradley never trailed after that, although it got closer later in the 2nd half.

One of the Scorchers players was Michael "Big Mike" Ochereobia who was initially recruited out of Canarias Academy by Jim Les but then ended up playing his Division I ball for Jim Molinari at Western Illinois University.
Bradley shot reasonably well and played excellent defense - rebounding very well on both the defensive & offensive ends.  Bradley took a 43-23 halftime lead.
Further details can be found here - http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27740

Many of Bradley's guys played very well. Newcomer freshman Ari Boya scored 5 pts and rebounded exceptionally well.  The Scorchers announcers were praising his play frequently.
Antoine Pittman played well both offensively (9 pts) and defensively.

Once Bradley hit about 50 points, the jet lag kicked in and they looked tired - allowing the Scorchers to outrun, outhustle and outplay the Braves and close the lead to just 2 points - largely by getting the benefit of a while lot of foul calls. (They went 18-22)

But Darrel Brown, Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye and Elijah Childs had an excellent 4th quarter & Ja"shon Henry had some nice plays - and Bradley held off a strong surge down the stretch by these seasoned professionals on their own home floor.
Bradley won the game 73-66.

The unofficial scoring totals as I have tallied were:
Elijah Childs 20 points on 9-14 and 9 rebounds
Antoine Pittman 9
Jayden Hodgson 7
DLO 10 plus 5 rebounds
Darrell Brown 7
Luuk van Bree 6
Ja'shon Henry 5
Ari Boya 4
Nate Kennell 3
Luqman Lundy 2
Brummett, Hanley did not score
Bradley outrebounded Surrey 52-30 and logged 25 offensive rebounds

I really enjoyed getting to listen to Bradley basketball in July!!  Great job Braves, and keep it up!  Hopefully if they get some coverage, ticket sales will surge.
Last year when Bradley was playing well down the stretch and battling for the upper half of the MVC (and going 13-2 at home!), the home attendances were in the 7,700-8,000 range!  Those kinds of crowds have not been seen with any regularity since the Jim Les era - and hopefully signals that the huge base of great, lifelong Bradley fans is ready to come back after the disaster of much of the past decade then resultant fallout from Joanne Glasser's horrific reign.

Here's more video & photos - http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27740&page=3

Bradley will now wrap up events in London & travel to Amsterdam to plat the Amsterdam Select on Friday August 3.  time for that game will be 8pm local, 2pm Central Time.

More info as it becomes available on that next game will be posted here-
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27742

GO Braves!!