COLUMN: Broken without Bradford
I’m going to be frank about this. I understand if it might come off as narrow-sighted or unfair to the people and players I do not mention.
But here is the truth: If a healthy Crystal Bradford plays last Friday against Akron, CMU advances and probably wins the conference championship the next day against Ball State.
As much as her teammates and coaches will deny it; as true as the cliché “basketball is a team game,” remains. CMU's best player is not your average star.
For this year’s CMU women’s team, it is all about Bradford. It always has been since she got here and until she graduates or moves on, it likely always will be.
This column’s purpose is not to convince you that Bradford is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Her Mid-American Conference and Defensive Player of the Year performance this season has already done that.
The point here is addressing the elephant in the room. Akron’s players and coaches both admitted that they knew CMU would “be a different team without Bradford.”
So why are we (at CMU) sitting here and acting like our expectations should remain the same without her in the lineup?
I was spoiled to cover this incredibly talented team this year. I refuse to downplay the remarkable efforts of Niki DiGuilio and Taylor Johnson.
They are two top seniors in the MAC this season. They are important to this year’s team, but they both played and lost to Akron on Saturday.
If CMU won, none of this would be relevant and a lot of people would have been wrong, myself included.
The dramatic and sudden style in which Bradford went down cannot be overstated. No time for in-game, on-the-court adjustment was available. This outcome was inconceivable, even a week ago.
While covering the tournament in Cleveland, Toledo Blade writer John Wagner posed the thought: “I bet Jessica Green (whose season was cut short last year by an ACL tear) knows how CB23 feels.”
Maybe. But I know that Green watched her team win the MAC that year, while Bradford looked on helplessly as the Chippewas met their tournament demise just days after perhaps the worst and best afternoon of her basketball career.
In a sense, Bradford was a blessing and curse to CMU this year. She was an X factor and a wild card. A beaming light that the Chippewas lived in darkness without against Akron.
With her health uncertain and the Chippewas spirits at a season-low, there is only one thought that can come to mind.
Oh, what could have been, or more accurately, what should have been.
We know what would have happened with Bradford leading the way.
