The Bradley Braves are Peoria's team — a Missouri Valley institution with one of the great individual legacies in college basketball history. Hersey Hawkins, the 1988 national scoring leader, remains the program's immortal: a Bradley Brave who became an NBA All-Star and whose retired number watches over every game.
The modern March peak came in 2006, when the 13th-seeded Braves stunned Kansas and Pittsburgh to reach the Sweet 16 — one of the great Cinderella runs of the decade. Jim Les's team played with Peoria toughness, and the back-to-back upsets announced Bradley to a generation of fans who'd never seen the Braves dance.
The program's deeper history includes the 1950s glory — national finals in 1950 and 1954 — when Bradley was among the nation's elite. Chet Walker, the Hall of Famer, starred in the early '60s, and the Braves' pipeline of pros is the envy of the Valley.
Carver Arena — inside the Peoria Civic Center — is the program's big stage: 11,000 seats downtown, where the Braves' faithful pack the building for Valley wars. When Bradley is good, the Civic Center is one of the loudest rooms in the mid-major world.
The Missouri Valley grind defines the season: Drake, Northern Iowa, Indiana State — a league where every game is a rock fight and the Arch Madness tournament in St. Louis decides everything. The Braves' history in the Valley is among its richest.
The 2019 MVC tournament title — and the NCAA trip that came with it — was the program's return to March after the 2006 magic. Brian Wardle's teams brought the toughness back, and Peoria believed again.
What defines Bradley is the lineage: Hersey Hawkins's scoring crown, the 2006 Sweet 16 stunners, and Peoria's unwavering love. The Braves don't just play in the Valley — they are the Valley, and the next March run is always brewing.
The 1950s Braves were national royalty: back-to-back NIT-era prominence, the 1950 and 1954 national finals, and a program that stood toe-to-toe with the sport's giants. Chet Walker's early-'60s brilliance — before his Hall of Fame NBA career — kept the flame alive, and Peoria's love affair with the Braves never wavered through the lean years. The 2006 Sweet 16 run reconnected the generations: old-timers who remembered the '50s finally had a new March story to tell, and the Civic Center shook like it was 1954 again. In Peoria, Bradley basketball is civic identity.
The 2025–26 campaign was another 20-win chapter in the Brian Wardle era — 21–13 overall, 13–7 in the Missouri Valley, second place. The Braves beat Valparaiso in the Arch Madness quarterfinals before Northern Iowa ended the run in the semifinals, and Bradley closed the year with an NIT first-round loss at Dayton. It followed a 28–9 season that ended in the MVC championship game against Drake and a run to the NIT quarterfinals, where the Braves fell to eventual champion Chattanooga.
Wardle enters his 12th season on the Hilltop, and the résumé is airtight: back-to-back MVC tournament titles in 2019 and 2020, the 2022–23 regular-season crown at 25–10 and 16–4 in the league, and four 20-win seasons in the last five years. The 2025–26 team also debuted new uniforms built around the beloved 1980s script — a nod to the Hawkins era that longtime Peoria fans embraced immediately.
The roster math changed this spring. Wardle went into the transfer portal with a mandate — “we want some grown men for our roster” — and came out with a deeper, older, more versatile group. Trevon Payton arrives from Arkansas–Pine Bluff, where he shot 47.1 percent from three and averaged 10 points; Kyle Grill brings 13.3 points per game from Fort Hays State; Georgi Gerganov, a 6-foot-4 Bulgarian guard with pro-league and national-team experience, adds playmaking; and Noah Williams, Race Kowalczyk and Ben Thornbrue supply size and defense. They join returnees Demarion Burch and Jaquan “Bully” Johnson and a celebrated freshman class — Peoria's own Dietrich Richardson, Metamora sharpshooter Matthew Zobrist (son of Bradley Hall of Famer Aaron Zobrist, the program's all-time three-point percentage leader) and Montana Wheeler, plus transfer Alex Huibregtse.
The standard here is set in bronze: Hersey Hawkins, the 1988 national player of the year who averaged 36.3 points per game; back-to-back national runner-up finishes in 1950 and 1954; Chet Walker and Dave Stallworth. Wardle's rebuild put Bradley back among the Valley's annual contenders, and Carver Arena — where the Braves once won 14 straight home games — remains one of the league's toughest rooms. The missing piece is the same one that has eluded Peoria since 2020: an Arch Madness title and the NCAA bid that comes with it.
The modern renaissance started before the trophies. Wardle's 2018–19 and 2019–20 teams won back-to-back Arch Madness titles behind Darrell Brown and Elijah Childs, ending a 13-year NCAA drought, and the 2023–24 squad was powered by Malevy Leons — the Missouri Valley's Defensive Player of the Year, a steals-and-blocks machine — and Duke Deen's shot-making. The I-74 rivalry with Illinois State remains the Valley's most personal feud, and Carver Arena on a Saturday night in February, with the band blaring and the student section full, is still the building every visiting team circles on the schedule.