PEORIA – The Bradley men’s basketball team picked up where it left off in 1986, defeating NIU 76-67 in the ESPN Bracket Buster game on Saturday.

The Braves (13-14 overall) now have won five consecutive games over NIU and are 6-1 in the all-time series against the Huskies (7-18). The loss also extended NIU’s losing streak to 10 games this season. The 10 losses is one shy of the school record of 11 set in the 1975-’76 season.

“I thought it was a real game of runs,” NIU coach Rob Judson said. “Free throws could have extended some of our runs if we could have made some of those things.”

The Huskies haven’t won since the Jan. 14 home game against Eastern Michigan.

In the first half, NIU rallied from behind to take a two-point lead at halftime on a Perry Smith to Marcus Smallwood alley-oop with six seconds remaining. In the second half, the Huskies came out and opened their lead to six. It was the largest they would see the rest of the game.

In a one minute, 28 second span, Bradley’s Phillip Gilbert hit a trio of three-pointers to give the Braves the lead for good. Two of the threes came off Bradley offensive rebounds.

“In the middle of the second half, the two times [Bradley] got offensive rebounds and hit the threes, it really changed the game,” Judson said.

Gilbert finished with a game-high 22 points for the Braves in front of 9,215 fans in Carver Arena at the Peoria Civic Center. Senior James Gillingham scored 12 of his 16 points in the second half, including six in the final minutes.

“[Gillingham] got more aggressive in the second half,” Bradley coach Jim Les said. “He was able to help out Phillip. This is starting to become a very good team with a lot of different weapons.”

Smallwood scored 16 points in his first start since sitting out three games because of a coach’s decision. Smith led NIU with 17 points in the loss, while Rome Sanders and Todd Peterson finished with 14 and 10 points, respectively.