ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The original story, one of my first on the beat, ran way back in August of 2008, and a revised version appeared seven years later.
My intention was to ease into the new role with something fun. And so, I came up with what I described as my “All-St. Bonaventure Basketball Teams,” a collection that came with one stipulation: The selections went back only as far as 1993-94, the first year I began attending games on a regular basis.
Since then, this space has been used to put a Bona spin on a handful of offbeat sports themes, which generally come to light in the offseason, during the dog days of summer or, in this case, a complete sports standstill caused by a global pandemic.
I’ve presented, and then updated, my All-Bona Teams.
We’ve asked who would be on your Mount Rushmore for Bona basketball.
We’ve introduced the idea of a G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time), though with Bona, there’s no real debate as to who that player is.
Last summer, the program itself undertook a massive project, combining a fan vote with a four-person panel to come up with Bona’s 20-player All-Time Team in conjunction with its centennial season celebration.
And from that comes the next task for Bonnies fans, a commonly-used national sports query that we’ll serve up with a Bona twist:
You’re given $15 as a kind of salary cap. Choose your preferred “starting five” from the following list of 25 players (the 20 from the All-Time Team, plus five who just missed the cut) and their adjoining dollar values.
$5: Bob Lanier, Andrew Nicholson, Tom Stith, Jaylen Adams, Greg Sanders
$4: J.R. Bremer, Fred Crawford, Essie Hollis, Earl Belcher, David Vanterpool
$3: Sam Stith, Glenn Hagan, Marques Green, Tim Winn, Bill Butler
$2: Mark Jones, George Carter, Bill Kalbaugh, Glenn Price, Matt Gantt
$1: Matt Mobley, Marcus Posley, Courtney Stockard, Jim Baron, Rocky Llewellyn
Aside from the universal $15 challenge, which has been applied to any number of sports and specific teams over the years, the idea for this particular question stemmed from a recent tweet from the official Bona basketball account.
It put up a list of 30 players, with the following charge: “One game you must win. Pick your lineup from these St. Bonaventure basketball legends (and for good measure, why not throw in your 6th man, too).
“Who ya got?”
The question received a couple dozen responses and featured an array of choices, with most people seemingly being partial to players from their “generation.” Among those to respond was alumnus and esteemed New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro, who went with the following lineup: Adams, Vanterpool, Lanier, Tom Stith and Fred Crawford, with Sanders and Posley as his sixth and seventh man, respectively.
As far as the $15 challenge goes, for my money, I’d probably go with the following group of five: Lanier, Hollis, Green, Price and Posley. That way, I’d have all my bases covered: a dominant big man, a high-scoring forward, a tremendous point guard, one of the program’s top rebounders and a guard who not only filled it up on a regular basis, but was one of the most clutch players in Bona history.
And since we’ve already brought it up, and a few more all-time-caliber players have passed through since its last update in 2015, why not use this opportunity to create a third iteration of my “All-Bona Basketball Teams”?
(With this list going back to 1994, it essentially doubles as the First, Second and Third Bona teams from the last 25 years). Here’s how I would vote on those teams.
How would your list look?
FIRST TEAM
G — Jaylen Adams
G — Marques Green
G — J.R. Bremer
F — Andrew Nicholson
F — Harry Moore
SECOND TEAM
G — Marcus Posley
G — Matt Mobley
G — David Vanterpool
F — Courtney Stockard
F — Dion Wright
THIRD TEAM
G — Tim Winn
G — Kevin Houston
G — Rashaan Palmer
F — Demitrius Conger
F — Caswell Cyrus
First Five Out: Shandue McNeill, Ahmad Smith, Michael Lee, Youssou Ndoye, Peter Van Paassen.
Next Five Out: Patricio Prato, David “Messiah” Capers, Matthew Wright, Jonathan Hall, Nii Nelson-Richards.
Also Considered: Mike Gansey, Garland Mance, Denzel Gregg, Chris Matthews, Charlon Kloof.
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
