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Inside look at high school and Oakland University sports from Oakland Press sports writer Dave Pemberton.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Oakland to play at Bradley

Oakland will travel to Bradley Monday for the quarterfinals of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament. Bradley defeated Austin Peay, 81-74, at home in the first round of the tournament, while Oakland defeated Kent State at home to advance.

The Braves, who finished in fourth place in the Missouri Valley Conference, are 19-14 overall and are 12-3 at home this season.

“Bradley has been an outstanding team in the Missouri Valley, which is a conference that has some pull,” Oakland head coach Greg Kampe said. “When we hosted the NCAA Tournament at the Palace, they won two games here. They are pretty darn good. It’s a good team, not the best they’ve had, but solid. They have 19 wins and we’re excited to play them.”

The winner of the Oakland-Bradley game will host the winner of the Pacific-Idaho game in the semifinals. "They have bracketed the tournament now and the winner of our game will host the semifinals," Kampe said.

Oakland got off to a sluggish start in its win over Kent State and trailed 40-27 at halftime before outscoring the Golden Flashes, 53-34, in the second half. Kampe said the extra practice time to prepare for Bradley will help, but he believes at tournament time your team should be ready for anything.

“At this time of the year, your defense should be able to stop anything it sees,” Kampe said. “There shouldn’t be anything you haven’t seen before. I don’t know what they do yet. We are getting the tape today, will be figuring out their personal and trying to get it stopped.

“Except the last seven minutes of first half, (Kent State) couldn’t score on us. If your defense is sound and principles of it are sound, you can stop whatever you see.”

Kampe is also confident his team is now hungry to play in this tournament after not displaying that hunger in preparation for the Kent State game.

“I think they understand the tournament now,” Kampe said. “They played a game, they got excited and now they’re into it. I suspect we’ll go there and play well.”

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1 Comments:

Blogger J-Rad said...

Man this game was shades of OU losing to NDSU in the conference finals.

March 27, 2009 at 8:19 AM 

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