Bradley University head men’s basketball coach Brian Wardle has been named the Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year during the MVC Awards Banquet on Wednesday, March 1, in downtown St. Louis. Bradley is the No. 1 seed and outright regular-season champion for the first time since 1996.
Wardle has led a complete rebuild of the BU program that resulted in taking the team from a last place finish the year before he arrived to back-to-back conference championships in his fourth and fifth seasons. He helped Bradley end a 31-year drought as MVC Tournament Champions in 2019, and then the Braves became the ninth team in MVC history to repeat as tourney champions in 2020 as the Braves qualified for the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1954 and 1955.
This year’s team became the first Bradley men’s basketball team to win a regular-season championship since 1996. The regular-season men’s basketball title marked the 7th for Bradley in its history. The Braves enter the State Farm MVC Championship (March 2-5) as the league’s No. 1 seed with a 23-8 overall record and 16-4 league mark, and the team sports a 10-game win streak. Bradley’s next win will be the most for the program since winning 26 games in 1988.
Wardle joins a legendary group of former Bradley coaches to earn the league’s Coach of the Year honor, including Forddy Anderson (1950), Chuck Orsborn (1960, 1962), Joe Stowell (1974), Dick Versace (1980, 1986), Stan Albeck (1988), and Jim Molinari (1996).
Prior to joining the Braves, Wardle compiled a 95-65 (.594) overall record in his five seasons at Green Bay, which culminated with back-to-back 24-win seasons and the 2013-14 Horizon League regular-season title. Wardle was the 2014 Skip Prosser Man of the Year and the 2014 NABC District 12 Coach of the Year while at Green Bay.
