ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The game was over and St. Bonaventure had won, but the focus was almost immediately on the challenge ahead.
“Now we get on a plane and head to Rhode Island,” coach Mark Schmidt said Wednesday after the Bonnies’ 77-61 victory over Fordham which snapped an unsightly two-game skid.
For as needed as that triumph over the Bronx-based Rams was, a win over the Kingston-based Rams would be massive from an NCAA at-large perspective.
Rhode Island (12-3, 4-0) is the highest ranked Bona opponent in the Ratings Percentage Index to date, checking in at No. 15, two spots ahead of TCU and 13 spaces higher than Syracuse. This is a team that’s won 12-straight Atlantic 10 games dating back to last season (including the A-10 Tournament), is 9-0 at home this year and is off to its first 4-0 league start since 1997-98.
For Bona (12-4, 2-2), its two meetings with the Rams are the biggest remaining contests of the season, a pair of nationally televised games pitting the teams selected to finish Nos. 1 and 2 in the preseason poll.
The first of those daunting matchups comes in a rare morning start today in what will be close to a sold-out Ryan Center.
“They’re physical, very well experienced, very good guards,” said Schmidt, when asked to assess the challenge. “They’re well-coached and hard to play against — defensively, they deny; offensively, they’re really aggressive off the bounce.
“It’s a tough task, we understand that. We’re going to go in and see if we can play well and steal one at the end.”
For Schmidt’s team, there’s no denying that this one means more than many of the rest. A top 50 road win would not only return it squarely to at-large contention but go a long way toward erasing those road losses to Dayton and Saint Joseph’s.
That has almost certainly been the message he’s delivered to his player behind closed doors over the last two days. Publicly, though? It’s merely the next test in a string of difficult games.
“It’s important … they’re all important,” said Schmidt, whose group is amid perhaps its toughest stretch of the year, playing four out of five on the road, including three against RPI top 100 opponents. “We understand Rhode Island is a really good team. We know we have to play well if we’re going to win. We’re not going to play harder because it’s Rhode Island compared to somebody else.”
Bona returned to form defensively against Fordham, limiting the Rams to only 61 points on 36 percent shooting. It still ranks No. 1 in the league in field goal percentage defense (41.1) and fifth in scoring D (68.1).
It’s going to need a strong showing — AND be able to handle URI’s physical, pressuring defense — to leave Kingston with a win.
Rhode Island is one of the few A-10 teams with a backcourt that compares to Bona’s, and it’s deeper, with four guards who start and two or three others who can plug almost seamlessly off the bench.
The Rams are led in scoring by senior guard Jared Terrell, a second team preseason all-conference selection that averages 18 points, and first team choice E.C. Matthews, who previously missed six games with a hand injury, but is back and averaging 14 points. Four others, including seniors Stanford Robinson and Jarvis Garrett, average between seven and 10 points.
Schmidt acknowledged the difficulty in defending the Rams, saying, “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” but is confident in his team’s ability.
“We’re comfortable with who we’re playing,” he said. “You only play five guys at a time. They’re talented, (but some) don’t play a lot of minutes. Some guys play less than 10 minutes a game. But they’re talented, they attack you.
“One of the keys is we gotta take care of the basketball, make sure we’re running good offense and keep them in front of us on the defensive end.”
A year ago, this was a bad matchup for the Bonnies due to the fact that URI had two standout big men in Hassan Martin and Kuran Iverson and Bona struggled inside at both ends. The teams played each other twice and the Rams overwhelmed Schmidt’s team on both occasions, including once in the A-10 Tournament.
This year, the Rams are more perimeter-oriented. But they’re the same physical team they’ve been under coach Dan Hurley (in the two meetings last year, Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley went a combined 7-of-25 and 8-of-22, with Mobley going only 1-for-14 total).
“They start four guards, but they can also go big,” Schmidt noted. “The kid (Andre) Berry’s good, (Cyril) Langevine’s good. They play them together at times. They may not have Martin, they may not have the length they had last year, but they’re still effective. They still play the same style that’s hard to go against.”
Hurley, whose teams have won four of the last over the Bonnies, was complimentary of Bona earlier in the week, saying: “Outside of Virginia, they’re in a group with the best teams we’ve played.”
The Bonnies are ready — desperate — to earn one of their biggest wins of the season, no matter how early the game is.
“No,” said Schmidt, when asked if the 11 a.m. start might have any effect on his team. “We just wake up a little bit earlier. We get our walk-through in, our pregame meal in, go to the gym and play. It would be just like if it was a 7 o’clock start. It doesn’t change what we do on game day. We practice at 6 a.m. all preseason, so it shouldn’t affect us.”
