ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Jaren English summarized the matter during a postgame press conference in mid-January.
The sophomore guard had just set a career high with six assists in the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team’s 64-44 home win over Fordham, reaching that number due, in part, to point guard Kyle Lofton’s rare exit with foul trouble.
English said he’d made a concerted effort to hand out more assists than the Atlantic 10’s leader in that category, Lofton. But even with the extra time at PG in Lofton’s absence, he still came up short.
“It’s a tough task,” he said with a laugh, “but I have faith in our guys. Every shot they take, every time I pass it to them, I have a great feeling it’s going in. Just having trust in the guys … (Kyle) has trust in us when he passes the ball. I think overall we have a great camaraderie of guys, and we play for each other.”
Yes, this Bona season, perhaps more than any other under Mark Schmidt, has been defined by balance and a natural selflessness on the offensive end.
And that’s the approach it’ll bring into tonight’s rematch with Duquesne (7 o’clock, WPIG-FM, WHDL-AM, Stadium-TV) inside the Reilly Center as it continues to push closer to a “double-bye” in the A-10 Tournament.
Consider: Only one player, Lofton, has scored more than 22 points in a game this season, yet six have reached 20 points and led the Bonnies (18-9, 10-4) in scoring on at least two occasions.
Bona has had a total of nine 20-plus point games this winter, its fewest (at the moment) over the last decade. Simultaneously, it’s produced four double-digit scorers in 14 of 27 games, the largest such percentage over the same stretch.
And while that doesn’t make their offense better than, say, in 2017-18, when Jaylen Adams and Matt Mobley combined for 40-plus points a night, it’s given the Bonnies plenty of options each time out.
“It can go both ways,” Schmidt said. “When you have a guy that can go and get 30, that’s good to have. But at the same time, it’s hard for a defense to be able to lock in on one or two guys, and that’s the positive thing about our team …
“We don’t have that one guy … not that they can’t go off for 30, but we have more balanced scoring, which makes it more difficult for the opponent to scout us, guard us. Coming out of timeouts, we can go to different guys. It’s given us some flexibility.”
Never more was that flexibility on display than in the Bonnies’ first meeting with the Dukes.
Eighteen days ago, four players had 12 or more points, and five had at least nine, in Bona’s highly entertaining 83-80 road victory. Schmidt’s team, which ranks No. 4 in league play in helpers (14.2 per game), assisted on 18 of 30 buckets and had five players make at least one 3-pointer while eclipsing 80 points for just the third time this season.
As Schmidt noted Tuesday, it’s not as if his teams that featured great individual scorers were in any way more selfish. It’s that this team, comprised primarily of freshmen and sophomores, has come to rely on that team-first mentality.
“We’re a young team, and they understand that in order for us to be successful, it’s got to be a team effort,” the 13th-year coach said. “Everybody’s going to have their day in the sun, which they’ve had. And we’ve just got to go about our business of winning games, no matter how it is, and I think our guys have bought into that.
“In terms of sharing the ball, I think we do that. Guys aren’t hunting shots … it’s fun to watch.”
Nearly three weeks after topping Duquesne (18-8, 8-6), Bona has only improved its A-10 positioning heading into Game 2.
After Saturday’s crucial victory over Richmond, the Bonnies sit tied with the Spiders for third, only a game back of Rhode Island for second and a full two games ahead of the Dukes, VCU and Saint Louis for the No. 4 spot.
Though in full control of its destiny, Bona will once again be tasked with taking care of a solid opponent in the RC to maintain both its momentum and its stranglehold on the top four.
Does that create any added pressure over these final four regular season contests? Quite the opposite, Schmidt said.
“I don’t think there’s pressure at all,” he said. “These kids are playing, they’re having fun. There might be pressure from a coach’s standpoint or a fan standpoint, but for the players, they love what they do.
“This is what they practice all year for, to play in big games … and this is another big game.”
In Game 1, Schmidt’s only true lament was allowing Duquesne to go 14-of-34 from 3-point range and reserve guard Tavian Dunn-Martin to explode for 25, including seven of these treys. The hope is to do a better job defensively against a talented Dukes team — but one that has lost three of its last four, including back-to-back setbacks to GW (70-67) and Dayton (80-70) — though that’s easier said than done.
“(Dunn-Martin) is a guy that can go off like that,” said Schmidt, whose team is looking to secure its fourth A-10 sweep in four tries this season. “We missed some assignments, but he hit some big shots. They’re a good team, they can really score the basketball.
“They have good big guys inside that you have to concentrate on and good perimeter players that if you leave open, they’re going to knock them down. I gather that it’s going to be another really good game …. hopefully we can make one more basket.”
