The reaction was resounding, and it was united, and it’s lingered into these early offseason days of uncertainty.

“Come back home,” St. Bonaventure basketball fans seemed to say in unison after Bucknell forward and Emporium, native Nate Sestina, in an expected move, announced early last week that he was leaving the program as a graduate transfer.

From the get-go, Bona and the Bucknell big man seemed like a match made in heaven.

Sestina grew up 48 miles from the Bona campus, sowing the seeds for the kind of player he’d ultimately become at Cameron County High School, from where he was named the 2015 Big 30 Player of the Year. As a friend and former AAU teammate of coach Mark Schmidt’s sons, he’d spent the occasional summer day playing pickup in the Reilly Center.

Not only that, he’d ostensibly plug right into the power forward spot vacated by LaDarien Griffin, line up alongside a shot-blocking center and be playing for a team that would expect to contend for an Atlantic 10 title in his absence and be among the top two or three favorites in his presence.

The news had the following potential lineup dancing in fans’ heads:

Point guard: Kyle Lofton.

Shooting guard: Dominick Welch.

Small forward: Bobby Planutis.

Power forward: Nate Sestina.

Center: Osun Osunniyi

For as much sense as the pairing seems to make, however, for as lofty as the expectations would be with the addition of the 6-foot-9 forward, who averaged 16 points and nine rebounds and shot 38 percent from 3-point range this season, the question was likely going to be: How interested in Bona is Sestina?

The answer? Evidently, not as interested as one might imagine.

Bona fans saw firsthand just how legitimate Sestina had become in the season-opener, when he went for 15 points and 16 rebounds in Bucknell’s 88-85 overtime victory. The latest indication as to where he is as a player, and the level he might be aspiring to in his final campaign, came Monday.

That’s when it was revealed, first by Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, that Sestina will pay a visit to Kentucky — blue blood, John Calipari-led Kentucky — next week.

In an article Tuesday on “Sea of Blue,” a blog dedicated to Kentucky recruiting coverage, the author, through a “source close to the situation,” said that Sestina had already been contacted by around 50 schools, and that “many, many of those schools were high major programs.”

And those morsels seem to parallel what a handful of others, people still connected to Sestina through District 9 basketball, have indicated.

The feeling since he announced his intention to transfer last Tuesday is that Sestina, who only played four games his freshman season, thereby giving him a redshirt campaign and setting the course to play his fifth year elsewhere, will either choose a power conference program or opt to begin his professional career overseas.

One source said that the 245-pound forward had even received one phone call expressing interest in him as an NFL tight end.

To Bona fans, the choice is an easy one: Sestina should bring his All-Patriot League ability and NCAA Tournament experience to Bona, where he can play on a regular basis in front of family and friends and for a win-now team that, with him, would have a strong chance of reaching another Big Dance.

But, depending on where he ends up, it would be difficult to knock a player for wanting to spend his last season chasing a national title, even if a guaranteed 38 minutes per game falls somewhere between 15-20, over an A-10 championship.

Even with a talented returning core of Lofton, Welch and Osunniyi and the addition of an intriguing Planutis, Bona, as coach Mark Schmidt noted in his final postgame press conference, needs to add a few more pieces to make a realistic run at a league title next winter.

It needs somebody to fill the vacated power forward spot, another big to go with Osunniyi and backup center Amadi Ikpeze. It could use another shooter, a role that might potentially be filled by junior college transfer Matt Johnson. One more ball-handler wouldn’t hurt, a player who could give the iron man Lofton at least something of a nightly breather.

Historically, under Schmidt, the Bonnies have done an exceptional job of addressing their needs — both for the immediate future and down the line — in the spring.

And that’s undoubtedly what Schmidt and his staff, both before and after that heartbreaking season-ending loss to Saint Louis in the A-10 championship game, have set out to do. It’s just that, whatever haul they end up with, it likely won’t include the hometown player Sestina.

(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)