Fate, Hurricane Finally Catch Up With Braves
1/18/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 6, 1986
Tulsa, OKLA. - March 6, 1986 Tulsa World
For 22 games, Bradley eluded more ambushes than the Lone Ranger and Tonto, extracting itself from one predicament after another with swashbuckling Hollywood flair. Every bullet with Bradley's name on it lodged in the tree behind it or the ground before it.
But Wednesday night there was no escape for the ninth-ranked Braves. Tulsa, which had been at the head of the posse that unsuccessfully pursued the Braves through a 16-game Missouri Valley Conference basketball schedule, brought them down the way the Bolivians finally got Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with a withering hail of fire that left nothing to chance or the mercy of a Hersey Hawkins shot or a Jim Les pass.
"I sat in awe of some of the things our team was doing," said TU coach J.D. Barnett. "I just think we played extremely well. We made shot after shot, and it just seemed to snowball."
And Bradley's 22-game winning streak was dead, buried at the bottom of 74-58 score in the finals of the MVC tournament.
The Braves led very early in the game, but TU overtook them and pushed out to a six-point lead at the half. Already Bradley coach Dick Versace, accustomed as he has become to second-half rallies, was uneasy.
"We were in contention as far as the score was concerned," Versace said. "We'd missed some shots we normally made, but those things usually have a way of righting themselves in the second half. But there was one ominous statistic - rebounding - plus a general feeling about the game.
"I exhorted the team as best I could. They gave, but there wasn't enough. It's like when you run as hard as you can, but it just is not there."
It was not exactly as if Bradley played poorly, either. It shot a respectable 49 percent and made only 10 turnovers.
But TU shot 55 percent, made just eight turnovers, and out rebounded Bradley by 10 boards, 34-24. That didn't leave much of a crack for Bradley to wriggle through.
"When I looked in Jim Les' eyes, his eyes told me they were coming back, said TU's Byron Boudreaux. "But when he looked in my eyes, my eyes told him, `No, you're not coming back.'"
Boudreaux won the stare-down. Les, the league's MVP, was 4 of 12 from the fields. The usually irrepresible Hawkins was 5 of 12. Mike Williams, the huge Bradley center who ravaged TU in earlier games, was held to 11 points, three in the second half, and a total of one rebound.
"David Moss, Anthony Fobbs and Jeff Rahilly did a good job of denying Williams the ball," Barnett said. "When he gets the ball, good things happened for their team. When he gets the ball he scores."
Williams did not get the ball inside during the second half, and neither did anyone else from Bradley. The marksmanship of Trevor Trimpe kept Bradley in contention for awhile, but only for awhile.
"We used different defenses," Barnett said. "We put in a match-up (assistant) Jim Rosborough used at Iowa. He put it in and it worked. We were able to take away their great athletic ability with our defense."
TU also took away Bradley's fast break. A suggestion by Boudreaux and Fobbs' hustling defense were the keys.
"We wanted to put pressure on Les as soon as possible. We were concerned, though, about them getting behind us. That happened early in the game, but then Anthony sprinted back after every basket. That enabled us to have Boudreaux on Les all the way up the floor."
TU's Tracy Moore, who Tuesday night said Bradley was on the decline, backed it up with 14 points to give him a tournament high 56 for three games, and did a creditable defensive job on Hawkins.
MVP honors, however, went to junior Brian Rahilly, who scored a career-high 22 points Wednesday and had 54 in the tournament. He also tied for individual rebounding honors with Moss and Illinois State's Derrick Sanders.
Rahilly's production helped TU overcome the loss of senior guard Herb Suggs because of an injury, and represented a significant improvement since he recovered from an ankle injury a month ago.
"After I missed the Bradley game here and we lost, I felt like I'd let my teammates down," he said. "I decided I can't hold back, I have to be the aggressor.
"Besides," Rahilly added with a grin, "I'd rather have the other team mad at me than coach Barnett."
Moss, who hit 8 of 13 from the field and six of seven from the line, was more eye-catching with his nine rebounds.
"Coach told me not everyone can be a shooter," Moss said. "He told me I had to rebound. So I knew coming into tonight that I had to go after every shot."
"We had great execution on offense," Barnett said. "We took care of the ball. Bradley came at us with everything it had, like kamikazes, and we had only eight turnovers. That takes great concentration.
"I thought Bradley played well," Barnett said, "but we played better."
-- Game story published by The Tulsa World on March 6, 1986. Special thanks to the Tulsa World for permission to reprint this story.