SYRACUSE, N.Y. — For one calming moment inside the Reilly Center Thursday, there was no hyperbole, no buzz, no counting down the hours and minutes until this long-anticipated Christmas weekend matchup.
There wasn’t even the sound of bouncing basketballs and squeaking sneakers.
In this snapshot in time, the only thing that could be heard was the shutting of a locker room door and a coach about to launch into just how you go about attacking Syracuse’s vaunted 2-3 zone.
Now, to the hype …
Tonight’s non-conference game between the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team and the Orange inside the Carrier Dome is inarguably the biggest for the Bonnies in the Mark Schmidt era.
Bona (9-2) enters today on a six-game win streak and amid the program’s best start in 17 years while the Orange come in with a 10-1 record and a four-game unbeaten stretch of its own. For coach Mark Schmidt’s team, there’s plenty at stake: perhaps the last non-league win needed for realistic at-large consideration in March, capping an impressive non-conference campaign with another Top 100 victory, the program’s first win in the Carrier Dome, bragging rights.
The Bonnies know it: This is a showdown — between teams currently ranked No. 52 (Syracuse) and No. 60 (Bona) by KenPom — in the truest sense. For them, though, it’s boiled down to this: Another opportunity.
“It’s a big game obviously for bragging rights, for being the best team in the state,” junior LaDarien Griffin said. “We want to continue rolling, we want to continue to make history. I think that’s the biggest thing, and just play our game.
“We can play with them. You go into any game thinking you can play with anybody, so it’s just a matter of taking care of business when we go there.”
Added Schmidt: “We know who we’re playing, we know the type of environment we’re playing in. We just got to go in and play the game the way we know how to play it. Hopefully in the last five minutes, we’ll be in the game and have a chance to win it.”
Bona has already begun constructing its postseason resume, having gone 5-1 against the KenPom Top 150, with wins over Maryland (No. 34) and Vermont (No. 69). It’s already proven it can hang with a bigger Power 5 team by beating the Terrapins last month. Syracuse has been solid in a “retooling” year, having beaten Maryland (72-70) and UConn while needing overtime to top Georgetown last week.
On Tuesday, the Orange were taken to the end by common opponent Buffalo before prevailing, 81-74.
A win for Bona would be as historic as it is important to its postseason chances.
Syracuse has won 14-straight over Bona, with the latter’s last victory coming in January of 1981, and owns a 24-3 advantage in the all-time series. The Bonnies’ only three triumphs came in the RC (twice) and Rochester. Schmidt teams are 0-2 against the Orange, having lost in 2009 and dropping a 79-66 decision in 2015 — a game it led at halftime.
The current Bonnies aren’t worried about the past, or even the future, however. Their focus is on channeling the emotions that come with a game of this magnitude into the Orange at 7 p.m.
“You kind of can’t really focus on it — the ramifications of it later down the line,” Griffin said. “You just want to keep playing good, keep it rolling and close on a high note. It’s not really listening to the pressure; take care of business, focus on what we need to focus on and just keep playing together.”
Added Schmidt: “You want to play with emotion. We need to play with emotion every night. When we play with emotion, that’s when we play well.”
The Syracuse zone will undoubtedly pose a challenge for the Bonnies. Senior guards Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley will almost certainly need to be hot from the perimeter; Griffin and Josh Ayeni will need to help create holes at the elbows.
The biggest challenge, however, might be handling the Orange’s length.
Coach Jim Boeheim’s team goes 6-foot-8, 6-foot-8, 7-foot-2 on the perimeter, has no starters shorter than 6-foot-5 and owns a decisive plus-11 advantage on the glass. Sophomore guard Tyus Battle leads the Orange, whose only loss is to Kansas, at 21 points per game. Freshman forward Oshae Brissett averages 16 points and 10 rebounds and went an amazing 16-for-16 at the line against Buffalo while junior guard Frank Howard notches 16 points and six assists.
For Bona, the key will be limiting the Orange inside and keeping them off the free throw line.
“We gotta box out; we can’t be watching the ball,” Griffin saiid. “It’s going to be a war on the glass, but we’ve got guys that want to play, that want to compete, that want to fight, so I think that’s something we’ve got to look forward to doing.”
Bona has struggled on both sides of the interior in recent seasons, but it did a formidable job against a much bigger Maryland team and has been strong defensively this season. In addition, Schmidt pointed out how the Bonnies pulled down 24 offensive rebounds and outrebounded the Orange by 10 in their last trip to the Carrier Dome.
“(And) we weren’t a big team then,” he said. “It’s not how big you are, it’s how big you play.
“You just try to outscrap them and play hard hard and do the fundamental stuff we need to do. The bottom line is we’ve got to play hard, no matter if you’re playing against 8-foot guys or 5-foot guys. You’ve got to compete and hopefully our guys can compete.”
Griffin sees tonight’s battle against the Orange’s daunting front line as a personal challenge.
“Definitely,” the 6-foot-6 forward said. “I know those guys are high level guys, so you want to play your A game, you want to show that I can compete with those guys, too. You always go into every game thinking it’s a personal challenge.”
