ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — As it turned out, the only ones who got “trapped” were the St. Bonaventure basketball fans.
Heading into Wednesday night’s game at the Reilly Center — an almost overlooked meeting with Northeastern — the concern was that the Bonnies, coming off of Saturday’s buzzer-beating 81-79 victory over Vermont at Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena and facing Friday’s game at hated rival Syracuse, coach Mark Schmidt’s crew would overlook the Huskies.
As it turns out, Bona nation, including the 3,278 who showed up at the RC, was dead wrong.
Oh, by Schmidt’s admission, it wasn’t the Bonnies most artistic performance, but their 84-65 victory constituted a workmanlike domination.
After all, this was a clash between teams on five-game win streaks and one of the Huskies victories in that stretch was a 71-67 home triumph over Vermont — yeah, that team — albeit with the Catamounts missing a key player.
But the Bonnies led by as many as 26 points in a game that while, it WASN’T pretty, it WAS emphatic.
And now, at 9-2, St. Bonaventure travels to the Carrier Dome on Friday night to face Syracuse (10-1), which is 8-0 on its home court and has left New York State only twice in 11 games.
The Orange’s last home game though, an 81-74 victory over Buffalo on Tuesday night, gives hope to the Bonnie faithful that are all too aware that it’s a team SBU beat, 73-62, three weeks earlier, on the road.
Only two days ago, UB was ahead, 68-67, with three minutes to play before succumbing to the Orange.
But Schmidt is merely delighted to be where his team is.
“Coming back from Florida (beating Maryland, losing to TCU at the Emerald Coast Classic in Niceville) we knew we had a really tough schedule, I wasn’t sitting here thinking we were going 6-0,” he said.
“Our goal was to go 3-0 on the road (Siena, Buffalo, Canisius) and 3-0 at home (Yale, Vermont at Rochester, and Northeastern) and we did … we couldn’t do better than our record coming back from Florida.”
But now, after beating the Huskies, Bona faces Syracuse with only one day to get ready.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s like the NCAA Tournament … you have one day to prepare,” Schmidt said. “When we went down to Florida, we had no days to prepare (before TCU). We’ll do what we need to do tonight and tomorrow and get our guys as prepared as we can for the Syracuse game.”
He pointed out, “ It’s not like Syracuse plays multiple defenses from that standpoint, but it’s just hard in having one day to prepare. Against Syracuse, even if you had a week to prepare you can’t simulate their zone, their length. We don’t have guys with a 7-foot wingspan. We don’t have a 7-foot-4 guy inside or whatever they have (7–2, Paschal Chukwu). It’s not the length, it’s not the Xs and Os, it’s the fatigue … if there was something being negative.”
But Schmidt, who maintains his players can handle a turnaround, sees the UB analogy as invalid.
“You can’t look at it as this team played them well and we beat this team. It’s all styles,” he said. “You look in the Atlantic 10 and some teams play some teams well. And some teams struggle against certain teams. It’s just style of play … so you can’t look at it as so-and-so beat ‘em and played ‘em tough and we beat ‘em by 11.”
And Matt Mosley, who downed Vermont on the buzzer-beating 25-foot shot as time expired, though the 20 points-per-game scorer had yet to log a point until then, added, “Coach Schmidt did a great job of keeping us focused on Northeastern because they’re a very good team … they beat Vermont, so we knew we couldn’t sleep on these guys.
“But now that the game is over, we can focus on the ‘Cuse, for sure, and we’re all excited and ready to play.”
And one win from a secure place in the national consciousness.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
