{"id":44692,"date":"2025-05-20T06:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T06:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/44692\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T06:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T06:16:11","slug":"future-attraction-bradley-basketball-gets-commitment-from-prep-class-of-2026-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/44692\/","title":{"rendered":"Future attraction: Bradley basketball gets commitment from prep Class of 2026 player"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEORIA \u2014 The Bradley Braves <\/a>collected a player for their 2026-27 roster on Monday when high school junior Race Kowalczyk committed to the Braves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-7, 190-pound forward averaged 18.5 points per game in the regular-season during his junior season in 2024-25 for the St. John’s Jesuit Titans<\/a> in Toledo, Ohio. The Titans<\/a> finished 15-8 and were eliminated in the second round of Ohio’s state playoffs.<\/p>\n

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Kowalczyk had offers from Bradley<\/a>, Green Bay, Toledo, UC Irvine and Wyoming. He is the son of Toledo men’s basketball head coach Tod Kowalczyk, and the cousin of Duke<\/a> star Kon Knueppel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tod Kowalczyk was head coach at Green Bay from 2002-10, and had now-Bradley head coach Brian Wardle on his staff as an assistant there. When Kowalczyk moved on after the 2009-10 season to become head coach at Toledo, Wardle took over as head coach at Green Bay.<\/p>\n

The player has a high basketball IQ \u2014 the son of a coach, after all \u2014 and blossomed from a freshman season in which he was a reserve on the Titans’ state final four team to a breakout sophomore season in which prospect publication Prep Hoops Ohio ranked him as the No. 10 player in the state’s 2026 class.<\/p>\n

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He added elite-level play in his junior season of 2024-25, evolving from a self-proclaimed trash-talker who plays with a swagger and a chip on his shoulder. The Toledo Blade reported his 2024-25 prospect ranking was No. 8 in the state among all players and No. 4 among power forwards.<\/p>\n

The business of basketball: Opt outs and Bradley’s NIL collective in the NCAA portal era<\/a><\/p>\n

“If he grows a little bit and fills out, with his work ethic, he has a chance to be very good,” Tod Kowalczyk said in a 2024 Blade story<\/a>. “The level stuff will all play out. It\u2019s not about that. It\u2019s about finding the right fit. He needs to go play for a coach who values skills and values toughness.<\/p>\n

“And I have a pretty good idea who that coach is.”<\/p>\n

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(This story has been updated to add additional information)<\/p>\n

Dave Eminian is the Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men’s basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on X.com @icetimecleve.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Bradley basketball recruiting: BU gets commitment from Class of 2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA \u2014 The Bradley Braves collected a player for their 2026-27 roster on Monday when high school junior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,12281,12285,12284,2559,12283,12282,12280],"class_list":{"0":"post-44692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bradley-braves","10":"tag-bradley-university","11":"tag-brian-wardle","12":"tag-head-coach","13":"tag-junior-season","14":"tag-race-kowalczyk","15":"tag-tod-kowalczyk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114538702433163386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}