Keegan: Kansas a better Bradley

By Tom Keegan     Mar 17, 2006

? “Dangerous team” is a term that gets tossed around a lot in March. Let’s look at exactly what qualifies a team as “dangerous.”

First, it would have to be a team peaking at tournament time, in some cases because of a player back from injury or suspension. Next, having an NBA prospect usually helps. So does playing in a conference that had a better year than usual.

Bradley University has won seven of eight games heading into tonight’s Oakland Regional first-round game against Kansas University in The Palace the Detroit Pistons call home.

Senior forward Marcellus Sommerville is a marginal NBA prospect who originally signed with Iowa, red-shirted there a year, transferred to a junior college and is in his third year at Bradley. He’s not the team’s top prospect.

The Missouri Valley Conference was so deep, the most common question isn’t why they deserved that many bids, rather how in the world was Missouri State denied one? Wichita State advanced the conference’s reputation by blasting Seton Hall in a Washington, D.C., regional first-round game.

More danger: Bradley center Patrick O’Bryant, a sophomore 7-footer and a legitimate NBA prospect, was the MVC Defensive Player of the Year. He missed the first eight games of the season because of a Darnell Jackson-type “extra benefits” suspension.

Sommerville, a two-time first-team all-conference player, and point guard Daniel Ruffin play the sort of in-your-face defense that Jeff Hawkins does for Kansas. Ruffin’s careful with the ball, too, leading the conference with a 1.95 assists-to-turnovers ratio.

Bradley qualifies as a dangerous team.

“We got a tough draw,” KU coach Bill Self said. “We got a tough draw.”

Self is right in this way: Bradley is playing more to about a No. 10 seed than a 13.

But you know what? Bradley got a much tougher draw. The Braves have to play Kansas. Bradley’s not as dangerous a matchup for Kansas as it would be for a lot of teams. Bradley sparks its offense by pressuring the ball, forcing turnovers and, thanks to O’Bryant, blocking shots. It’s nothing the Jayhawks don’t face every day in practice. Kansas does everything Bradley does, just does it better, with a deeper roster of athletes.

Reid Hanley, covering games here for the Chicago Tribune, said it best as he took his seat for KU’s late-afternoon shoot-around: “Kansas looks like a basketball team you would order out of a catalog. Let’s see, I’ll have two athletic 6-10 guys, and give me a few really quick guards, and then give me : “

Upsets do happen, this just doesn’t feel like one. The Big 12 has flamed out in the NIT and took a hit when Oklahoma lost to Wisconsin-Milwaukee. That’s nice, but all it did was prove what we’ve known for a while, which is that the Big 12 had two powerhouse teams followed by a pack of question marks.

Neither team will have to struggle to dictate tempo tonight.

“They run a lot of stuff like us, trying to push the ball and push the tempo and use your athleticism to your advantage,” O’Bryant said. “It’s pretty much just an us-against-ourselves kind of game.”

More accurately, it’s the Braves against a better version of themselves. Call it Kansas 79, Bradley 63.

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