Versace: Team Has Bond of Togetherness : Bradley’s Braves Found Chemistry That Helped Create an Undefeated Conference Season

Bradley Coach Dick Versace worried that his players might be “at each other’s throats” after a 15-day tour of Italy last July. Instead, they’ve been at each other’s sides, creating an extraordinary basketball season for the 11th-ranked Braves.

“They have a bond of togetherness that most teams don’t have,” said the 44-year-old Versace. “The chemistry of this team has just elevated their level of play and their poise.

“And you know we’ve been lucky, too.”

The team has won 12 games by four or fewer points and eight by only a point or two. The Braves won twice with what fans celebrate as “miracle” plays--90-foot inbounds passes from senior Jim Les to sophomore Hersey Hawkins, who each time twisted in mid-air and sank long jumpers with no time left.

Bradley, with two seniors, two juniors, seven sophomores and two freshmen, won the Missouri Valley Conference championship on Feb. 20--the third Valley title in Versace’s eight years at the 5,000-student private university.

After Thursday night’s regular-season, 71-51 finale against conference rival Indiana State, Bradley boasted the longest winning streak among major colleges with 20 straight, and had the best record for a Division I school at 29-1.

The victory over Indiana State meant the first perfect conference season for a Valley team, at 16-0, since, ironically, Indiana State did it behind standout Larry Bird in 1979.

Bradley won the National Invitation Tournament in 1982, but a Versace team has journeyed to the prestigious NCAA Tournament only once, in 1980.

But, on the eve of the Valley’s postseason tourney Monday in Tulsa, Okla., and with a strong NCAA regional seeding expected in a week, Versace believes the 11-game summer sojourn in Italy paved the road of this season’s success.

The trip helped give team members “a philosophy, a way to play, the inculcation of unselfishness, a lot of vague things like that that you can’t really put your finger on, a lot of intangibles,” he said.

Versace, a Milwaukee-born Italian-American known for his white curly locks and boisterous behavior, said he gambled with such a trip--allowed once every four years under NCAA rules.

During the trip the team finished 5-6, losing three to a professional team of ex-U.S. college and NBA players.

“When you go on those trips you know it’s a gamble. You could fall apart. They could have come back and be at each other’s throats and not liked each other. I could be breaking up fights all season,” Versace said. “But it was the total antithesis of anything negative.

“It couldn’t have turned out any better. They genuinely enjoyed each other,” said Versace.

Point guard Les, a play-maker and clutch shooter who clearly has been the team spark plug, also believes the Italian tour gave members of the squad a chance to get to know each other well, knowledge that has proved useful.

“In close games, believe me, it helps to know who’s with you,” said Les, a 5-11 bundle of enthusiasm from a Chicago suburb who was averaging nearly 15 points a game and who holds the school record for career assists, more than 650.

Bradley is dominated by Chicagoans, who play an aggressive style of basketball that Versace said he came to admire while a coach at Gordon Tech High School of the Chicago Catholic League.

“I loved . . . the lads from Chicago and how they played, what made them tick,” he said. “If you ever saw two Public League teams going at it, I mean it looks like a hockey game sometimes. But they develop great individual skills that way.”

Versace said his key to coaching Chicagoans was to exploit their natural aggressiveness but rein them in enough that they play as a team.

Bradley is led by Les, who transferred from Cleveland State after playing for Notre Dame High School in the Chicago suburb of Niles.

“Jimmy is a charismatic leader with great skills, great heart, just every superlative you can think of,” said Versace.

Senior center Mike Williams, 6-8 and 255 pounds, is known as “Massive Mike” around campus. From Chicago’s De LaSalle High School, Williams was averaging 13.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game. He is “extremely agile for a man that size,” said Versace.

Hawkins, named the conference Newcomer of the Year last year as a freshman, is perhaps the team’s flashiest player and its most potent future weapon.

A graduate of Chicago’s Westinghouse High School, the 6-3 Hawkins is only the second Bradley sophomore to score 1,000 career points. He was averaging a little more than 19 a game, shooting 55% from the field and 78% from the foul-line.

“Hersey Hawkins will walk into the NBA three years from now and stay 10 years,” Versace told a group of Bradley boosters last fall.

Rounding out Bradley’s starting five are:

--Sophomore Trevor Trimpe, from Havana, a small Illinois River town south of Peoria. Trimpe, 6-7, 210 pounds, has the team’s second-highest number of assists.

--Sophomore Donald Powell, 6-8, 200 pounds, from Nowata, Okla., who was averaging 9.3 points per game. He was the team’s second-leading rebounder with 5.8 per game.