ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — As his night began to unfold, Jaren Holmes recalled the words of his former AAU coach.
“Trust the reps.”
As one shot after another began to fall, pushing him to 20, 25 and then 30 points, he heeded the direction from his teammates. “They just told me, ‘keep going, keep going, keep shooting it,’” a smiling Holmes said afterward.
And as Saint Joe’s continued to play zone, and Bona more effectively punctured the middle, he stood, open, on the opposite wing knowing this is exactly where he needed to be, “in those spots and ready to fire it.” And when it was over, he’d had his own otherworldly outing, a performance that led Bona to not only beating a long-time Atlantic 10 rival, but thrashing it … again.
Holmes poured in a career-high 38 points, drilled eight 3-pointers and made it a double-double with 10 rebounds to guide Bona to an 83-57 victory over Joe’s on Wednesday in a spectator-less Reilly Center. He became the seventh Bonnie to explode for 35 or more under coach Mark Schmidt’s watch. He was the sixth to tally 30-plus in a double-double effort.
And in a game where so much went right for the Bonnies (4-1, 2-1) — how about 27 assists on 32 baskets? — this was, by and large, Holmes’ night.
“IT’S JUST an amazing night,” the junior guard said afterward. “To experience that in this building, where so many St. Bonaventure players have gone for special nights like this, it’s amazing just to be up there with those guys … and celebrating it with my guys in the locker room.
“Me getting 38 without my teammates is almost impossible, especially (with Joe’s) playing zone. The guys were feeding me. All I can do is thank them. I was in the zone, but I was in the zone because of my teammates. They truly got me there, they had total confidence in me and they just got it to me in the right spots.”
It took a half for Bona to reach the realm of basketball bliss; it took an early 16-8 lead, fell behind 24-17 after a Joe’s run and finished strong to bring a 32-28 advantage into halftime. But once it did, there was no stopping this performance … in any facet.
JALEN Adaway had his own career game, totaling a Division I-high 24 points on 11-of-12 shooting. Behind that duo, which combined to go 25-of-34 with 17 rebounds, Bona managed to beat a league opponent by 26 despite the fact Kyle Lofton was held without a field goal and he and Welch totaled 12 points on 3-for-14.
Lofton, though, was still a key contributor, notching career highs of 11 assists (tied) and eight rebounds. Osun Osunniyi anchored a Bona defense that limited Joe’s (0-8, 0-3) to just 57 points, pulling down 12 rebounds with three blocks and successfully guarding the perimeter to help offset the Hawks’ five-out, 3-point-heavy attack.
And the result was a familiar one: Bona has now won 13 of the last 14 over Saint Joe’s, the last five by a staggering average of 22 points.
“Ultimately, we played great tonight,” Holmes said. “We’re getting better as a team, we’re getting more camaraderie with the new guys coming in. I love the step we’re taking. Ultimately, this is just a great win for us and a great stepping stone to keep moving up in the A-10 and keeping that momentum going.”
“We did what we wanted to do, especially in the second half. Jaren and Jalen played exceptionally well,” Schmidt said, before adding of his team’s overall numbers, which included limiting Joe’s standout Taylor Funk (13 points) to a single 3-pointer, “Any coach in America would be happy with that.
“We guarded them, a team that’s hard to guard. We attacked their zone effectively and we outrebounded them, so we hit all our marks. We gotta get better, we struggled in the first half, but it was a good victory for us.”
IN THE end, after it appeared that Adaway — and the tremendous job he did in the high post — would be the game’s central figure, it was a victory primarily spurred by Holmes.
The 6-foot-4 guard was untouchable after the break, tallying 26 points in the period and six of his treys in the final 12 minutes. He scored 11 points in an early 16-2 run that allowed Bona to go from up one (36-35) to up 15 (52-37) and take control for good. He hit 38 points on a 3-pointer with 3:02 still remaining and was pulled just over a minute later to a standing ovation from his teammates and coaches on the sideline.
“He deserves it, he works his tail off,” Schmidt of the Romulus, Mich., native, whose eight treys are tied with a handful of players for third-most in Bona history (behind Jaylen Adams’ 10 and Matt Mobley’s nine). The guys that put in the time, you want them to have success, and he does everything right … academically, socially.
“He deserves moments like this. Every kid that works his tail off, as a coach, you want them to be successful and have nights like that. I’m proud of him, and I know his teammates are, for having a night like this. The time he puts in, the commitment that he has, it shows.”
What did Holmes attribute his outburst to? “Trusting the reps.”
“Believing in my shot,” he said, when asked about that torrid second-half stretch. “My old AAU coach tells me to trust the reps, and I’ve just been getting a lot of reps in, shooting late nights, early mornings, and working with the guys.
“Ultimately, those guys are my brothers, so I’m just thankful that they believed in me and they kept staying on me and telling me to shoot and to keep trusting the reps.”
