FAIRFAX, Va. — The seeds for this kind of performance were sewn nearly 10 months earlier on a surprisingly mild March day in Brooklyn.
That afternoon, the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team, behind its young stars, went from down 15 points to up 21 in an Atlantic 10 Tournament semifinal matchup against Rhode Island. In barely more than a blink, it went from a dismal start to celebrating its berth in the championship game early.
They were tended to earlier this season in Florida. On Dec. 2, Bona rallied from a 17-point first-half deficit to capture the Boca Raton Beach Classic title with a 71-64 victory over host Florida Atlantic.
And they came to bloom on Wednesday night at Eaglebank Arena.
The Bonnies, according to coach Mark Schmidt, who used the word on three occasions, were “terrible” over the first 15 minutes, falling behind by margins of 19-4 and 27-13 to an inspired George Mason. But as they’ve become inclined to do, they turned that deficit on its side.
Kyle Lofton and Osun Osunniyi were, again, at the root of the comeback effort — Lofton with 17 points and five assists and his former prep school teammate with 18 rebounds and five blocks. And much like that Rhode Island game, Bona not only roared back, but ultimately ran away with it, downing the Patriots, 61-49 before a crowd of 2,511.
The Bonnies (10-5) — now 2-0 in conference play for the first time since 2015-16 — were every suitable synonym over the final 25 minutes: tough, resilient, gritty. And considering it came on the road, against a formidable GMU team, it was as impressive a performance as this still-young team has had so far.
“It’s good to see — the toughness, the mental toughness,” coach Mark Schmidt said. “They didn’t give in. It would have been easy for them to be down by 15, to just lay down and say, ‘hey, we got one win on the road (on Sunday against George Washington), let’s go home.’ But in the huddles, they were positive and they got stops.
“The key was the last five minutes of the first half where we were able to chip away, get some stops and make it close.”
If there was something that could have gone have gone wrong initially for the Bonnies, it did.
They coughed the ball up against Mason’s press and opened the game 4-for-14 from the field. They watched as six of the Patriots’ first eight 3-point attempts splashed home. They, as the cliche goes, didn’t come ready to play.
And then everything changed, particularly from a defensive standpoint.
Bona closed the half on a 14-4 run to pull to within four at halftime. It quickly scored eight-straight after the break, taking its first lead since 2-0 on a Bobby Planutis 3-pointer with 17:09 left. Down 39-38 midway through the period, Dominick Welch (11 points) made back-to-back 3-pointers to give his team a two-score advantage.
And from there, the Bonnies, who’d previously had no business being in this position, dominated.
“We’re just that type of team,” said Welch, who’d totaled just two points in the previous three halves before hitting those two big treys on Wednesday. “We were talking about it in the huddle: We’ve been here before down in Florida, so we decided we wanted to just chip away. Our team has a lot of grit and toughness to us. I just know the type of team we are, and I just know that we can always pull through.”
Added Lofton, who’s 12 first-half points led the comeback charge: “It just shows our character, our toughness. What we want to build is defense. Our offense hasn’t been flowing. One thing that we can bring everyday is defense, rebounding. It’s basically toughness — we bring that every day, that’s the results we get.”
And defense — as it has since the arrival of Lofton, Osunniyi and Welch — is what carried Bona in the second of its two-game D.C.-area swing.
After surrendering 22 points, and six treys, in the first 9:41, Schmidt’s team allowed only 27 over the final 31:19, a profound figure given that GMU entered with four double-digit scorers and an all-conference-caliber player, Justin Kier (11 points), who was seemingly en route to his first big game following an injury.
It limited the Patriots to a mere 18 points on 35 percent from the field, including a 1-for-10 mark, over the final 20 minutes. It outrebounded one of the better rebounding teams in the league, 44-24.
And when Alejandro Vasquez, who made a second-straight start in place of the injured Jaren English (concussion) and Planutis sank back-to-back 3s to give the Bonnies a 52-41 advantage with just over seven minutes left, this was no longer an impressive comeback away from home, it was a road decimation and perhaps an early message to the rest of the Atlantic 10.
