PEORIA, Ill. - Bradley took the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference men's soccer crown in front of its home crowd Sunday by edging Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in penalty kicks.

The game ended in a 0-0 tie in double overtime. Bradley took the battle of penalty kicks 4-3 in six rounds. The game halted when SIUE's Ryan Wilhelm hit the cross bar in the sixth round.

"It thought it was a good game between two quality teams," said SIUE Head Coach Kevin Kalish. "I thought we had our chances to win it.

Bradley, now 11-8-3, receives the Missouri Valley's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. SIUE closes out the tournament with a 10-5-4 record.

SIUE took the shot advantage 20-16 and three players were named to the All-Tournament team. Benny Jeffery, Kevin Bielicki and Wilhelm were selected by the coaches to the All-Tournament team for SIUE.

Sunday's title game took an ugly turn with four minutes to play in the second half. Bradley captain Bryan Gaul went foot first into the face of SIUE goalkeeper Nick Collico, who would leave the game. Gaul also left the game with a red card.

SIUE inserted freshman John Berner into the game, a player who had not seen a minute on the field all season and was No. 3 on the depth chart to start the season. Berner would play the final 4:10 of the second half and both overtime periods.

"It just goes to show you the depth of our goalkeepers," said Kalish.

Both teams had to deal with the wind and the sun heading toward the north goal. Both SIUE and Bradley had trouble defending that goal but neither bent. Bradley, the fifth seed in the tournament, picked up three saves from freshman goalkeeper Brian Billings.

Team saves were the story of first 90 minutes and two overtime periods. SIUE had three team saves while Bradley picked up two.

In penalty kicks, both Bradley's Christian Meza and SIUE's Benny Jeffery scored in the first round. Bradley's Keith Mach then missed on the left post. Jack Twellman would miss for SIUE when Billings saved the shot.

Berner followed up with a save of his own against Aodhan Quinn. Roy would have his attempt in the third round stopped by Billings. Bradley would make its next three attempts to win the penalty kicks.

Kalish said the Cougars will miss the 2010 seniors Roy, Bielicki, Mike Jones, Chris Anzalone, Chris Hopping, and Matt Spiess.

"I'm proud of them. We're going to miss them a lot. They're fantastic players and fantastic people," said Kalish. "They led our program back to Division I prominence again and hopefully we can take it a step further in the future."

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