Mark Schmidt noted it ahead of Wednesday’s game at Rhode Island.
“They’re a talented team,” the 14th-year St. Bonaventure coach said of the Rams. “They have a better identity than we have.”
And that’s one of the matters at hand for his Bonnies.
Five weeks (and only three games) into this disjointed season, Bona, after multiple starts and stops, a slight shift in personnel and multiple issues related to COVID-19, is still trying to nail down its identity.
Is this a team that can score with others? Bona averaged 79 points in wins over Akron and Hofstra, but managed just 57 against a good URI defense and is shooting only 28.9 percent from 3-point range so far.
Is this a team that can once again hang its hat on defense and rebounding? Given that its makeup is largely the same as the last two years, both of which produced Top 5 Atlantic 10 defenses, it would seem so. Bona currently ranks No. 4 in field goal percentage defense (.419) and sixth in scoring ‘D” (68.7), though it has been outrebounded in two of three of contests so far.
Is it something else?
Those are questions it hopes will materialize sooner than later in this ever-fragile 2020-21 campaign. And its next opportunity to find out comes today when the Bonnies, in a game that could well be more difficult than the last, meet preseason favorite Richmond (5 o’clock, CBS Sports-TV, WPIG-FM, WHDL-AM) in the Robins Center.
THE GOOD news for Bona (2-1, 0-1) is that even as it deals with lineup concerns — primarily the transfer of sophomore Justin Winston and the back injury to junior Jaren Holmes, who played just one minute against the Rams and is viewed as questionable for today — it has a mostly mature team in place.
Redshirt junior Jalen Adaway, who notched 12 points, six rebounds and three assists against the Rams, has been growing more comfortable by the game. Kent State transfer Anthony Roberts made his much-anticipated debut in the same contest. Both are now fixtures in a lineup that includes Kyle Lofton, Dominick Welch and Osun Osunniyi, who’d been playing well until Wednesday.
And, as history has shown with this group, early impressions aren’t necessarily indicative of what’s to come. Last year, for example, Bona got off to an ice cold shooting start while opening 1-4 before turning things around — and ultimately finishing fifth in 3-point percentage (.344).
And they’re hoping that things will go in the same direction this winter.
“All those guys … the guys that played a lot of minutes last year, yeah, it’s good to have those veterans that understand what the Atlantic 10 and the games are all about,” Schmidt reiterated before the URI game. “The problem is, they’re not in great shape. They haven’t played enough.
“It’s going to be a season where we’re trying to get in game shape during the games. Hopefully the minutes won’t be as many as they usually play — who knows? — but we’re lucky to have those veteran guys who have been there, who understand how difficult the Atlantic 10 conference is.”
AND TODAY? It’s a battle between two such teams.
Both Bona and Richmond welcomed back a bulk of the production from squads that won 19 and 24 games a year ago. They also brought back five all-conference players between them — Lofton and Osunniyi for the former and guards Jacob Gilyard and Blake Francis and forward Grant Golden for the latter.
It’s largely the reason why each was picked to finish in the top four — Richmond No. 1 and Bona No. 4 — this season.
This is a Spiders team with whom Bona and its fans are very familiar, as Gilyard and Golden have been around since the Bonnies’ NCAA Tournament season in 2017-18. And it’s one that has (mostly) lived up to its preseason billing.
Richmond (7-2) got off to a 6-1 start, including an impressive win at then-No. 10 Kentucky, and spent two weeks in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, at No. 19, before falling out after an 87-71 loss at No. 11 West Virginia. More recently, it lost at home to the same Hofstra team (76-71) that Bona had beaten three days earlier, but rebounded after an eight-day layoff with an 81-74 victory over Davidson in its A-10 opener.
GILYARD (11 points, 6 assists), Golden (15 points, 6 rebounds) and Francis (16 points) lead five starters in double figures. Senior forward Nathan Cayo is having another strong year (12 points) while sophomore Tyler Burton (13 points) has emerged as a solid complementary piece in the wake of the season-ending knee injury suffered by starter Nick Sherod in early November.
Behind that group, which accounts for 88 percent of UR’s scoring, the Spiders and their Princeton-style offense have been incredibly efficient, shooting 50.4 percent as a team, good for 25th nationally. And Richmond, even with the Hofstra loss, still received three votes in this week’s Top 25 poll.
This is also a program, however, against whom Bona has had a lot of recent success.
Schmidt’s teams have won four-straight over the Spiders, the best such stretch in program history, and have yet to lose to a UR team featuring Gilyard and Golden (2-0 in 2017-18, with a win each in 2018-19 and last winter). Included in that stretch was last year’s exciting 75-71 victory over an NCAA-caliber Richmond team (and one that finished second in the A-10) in the Reilly Center, the Bonnies’ second-best win of the year (behind its November triumph over Rutgers).
And this afternoon in Virginia’s capital, Bona will look to bounce back from its first loss of the year and make it five in a row over the Spiders.
