ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — His most cherished memory wasn’t actually born from that iconic 1969-70 Final Four season.

Though the program’s pinnacle and the reason for his presence on campus earlier this month, Dale Tepas’ favorite moment took place at Madison Square Garden a year and one week after St. Bonaventure’s Final Four matchup against Jacksonville.

That day, March 27, 1971, Bona won its only matchup with Duke, picking up a 92-88 overtime victory over the Blue Devils in the third-place game of the National Invitation Tournament. Tepas, a senior, contributed 15 points on 5-for-12 shooting and made all five of his free throw attempts before fouling out.

It’s a day that has stuck him nearly 50 years later for a very specific reason.

“I’d love to say it was from the Final Four team, but the memory that touches me the most was our last game of (my senior) season,” he said. “Rarely does a player go out of their career with a winning game.

“To me, that was a special moment in my career because we got to go out on a winning note.”

Tepas was one of 10 members of that Final Four team who were honored as part of their 50th anniversary celebration following the current Bonnies’ 73-45 decimation of Hofstra on December 7. After being introduced to a nearly sold out audience inside the Reilly Center, he took eight minutes to sit down and reflect on everything from that 1969-70 campaign, to playing alongside Bob Lanier, to where Mark Schmidt has the program now.

But before he could do that, the former 6-foot-1 guard from St. Joseph’s in Buffalo had to first try to fight, and then cede, all of the emotion that came with being back with his brothers.

“Even though we didn’t have to do anything other than walk out, it was very emotional,” a choked-up Tepas said. “I don’t know why. Maybe because we’re all getting older, and we know that.

“But for four years, we had such a bond together, it’s just hard to break that; you don’t want to break that. Weekends like this are tough because you know tomorrow we go home and it will be a while before we see each other again. But I love these guys. They’re my life, my best friends. That’s what it is.”

Tepas appeared in 15 games as a junior, contributing two points and a rebound for the team that ultimately went 25-3 and reached the national semifinals in College Park, Maryland. For a stretch over winter break, he missed time due to an injury, but still traveled with the Bonnies.

It was then, during an eventual 94-65 win at Kent State, on Jan. 10, 1970, that one of his most meaningful, and previously unspoken, moments with Lanier happened.

“I got on Bob because I thought we should have been up more and I didn’t think he was working hard enough,” Tepas recalled, “so I was giving him hell from the bench. We go into the locker room — we’re up eight or 10 at the half, and we should have been up by 15 or 20 — and Bob turns around and says, ‘keep your mouth shut, don’t say another word.

“Second half, I don’t say another word. After the game, we’re walking off the floor, he says, ‘I’m wrong, you were right. Keep doing it.’ But that’s the kind of guy Bob is. That moment may not have been the right time, but he knew that what I was trying to do was help him and help the team.”

Sitting at his table at the gala celebrating the program’s centennial season, Tepas and other members of that Final Team were asked how they would define the phrase, “the heart of St. Bonaventure basketball.”

Tepas pointed to the presence of “Merton’s Heart,” an open hillside space that seems to resemble a heart and is visible from across campus, and connected it to the heart the current Bonnies displayed in their 28-point victory over the Pride.

He commended the job that Schmidt has done in 13 seasons at Bona and believes that another program first could be around the corner.

“This team, you look and see the talent they’ve got,” he noted. “He’s probably got more talent now than he had maybe on two (previous) teams. He’s on the right track, without question. And this team has the chance to do something that maybe no other team at Bonaventure’s done …

“They have the ability — maybe this year, but I’m thinking more the next two years — to go to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments. They’d be the first team to do that, and I think they’ve got a chance to do that.”

Of what might ultimately make these Bonnies special, he added: “You’ve got to have the big guy in the middle, and they have him. You need guys that can shoot, they’ve got them. Maybe another power forward, another point guard to give (Kyle) Lofton some relief. But they’ve got the nucleus to go as far as they can.”

Before rejoining in the night’s festivities, Tepas was asked if there was anything else he wanted to share about his experience at Bona. The Buffalo native, a bigger contributor on the 1971 team that opened the year preseason No. 20 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, reached as high as No. 10 and advanced deep into the NIT (11 points, 3 rebounds per game), chose to circle back to this:

“The heart of St. Bonaventure basketball.”

“It’s the fans, the student body,” he said, “and the fans that come from all over, but in particular Olean and Allegany that have supported this program forever. That’s a big part of what this program is.

“I was at the (recent) games in Boca Raton, Florida; we had 300-400 people there. Nobody from the other school. When (Schmidt) recruits kids, I think they see that. And they say, ‘this is the kind of environment I want to play in.’ I think part of the environment, and part of the heart of St. Bonaventure basketball, is the fan base itself.”

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