For St. Bonaventure basketball fans, the goal was to emerge from the Atlantic 10 Men’s Tournament with an NCAA bid in hand.
Oh, the Bonnies had already won the A-10’s regular-season title outright and drawn the double-bye into the conference’s quarterfinals. They also ranked 29th in the NET ratings, which the NCAA uses to help formulate the 68-team tourney field.
But there was a nagging concern, given SBU’s previous experience “on the bubble,” that a loss to Duquesne in Friday afternoon’s quarters at Virginia Commonwealth’s Siegel Center might just jeopardize Bona’s place in “March Madness.”
AS IT TURNED out, the concerns were ill-founded.
The Bonnies exploded, after an early deficit, led the Dukes by 21 at intermission, lost focus early in the second half as their margin slipped to eight, then rolled to a solid 75-59 victory.
Thus, they face Saint Louis (17-4), a 86-72 winner over Dayton in the second A-10 quarterfinal, this afternoon back at the Siegel Center (6 o’clock, NBCSN-TV, 95.7 FM) in the conference semis.
St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt, when asked whether beating the Dukes constituted an NCAA ticket, was understandably cautious.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he allowed. “The one thing that can fix everything is we win (against Saint Louis) and go to Dayton and win next Sunday (to claim the A-10’s automatic NCAA bid), then we control our own destiny.
“But we’ve have a successful season … we have a NET of 29, we won the Atlantic 10 outright for the first time in school history, so we’ve done some great things. But who knows what (the NCAA committee is) thinking. We’ve just got to focus on the next game and hopefully we play well.”
THE BONNIES did just that other than an unsightly span of seven minutes when the Dukes reduced what had been a 23-point deficit to 47-39 after intermission, highlighted by a 12-0 run.
“We came here to go 2-0 and you can’t do that until you’re 1-0 and we accomplished that first goal,” Schmidt said of potentially earning a berth in the A-10 Championship Game.
Junior center Osun Osunniyi, when asked about the 55-52 loss to Dayton in the regular-season finale on Monday night at the Reilly Center, admitted, “In a way the loss helped us to refocus ourselves and get our mindset ready for this tournament and win some games. It’s playoff time for us … we didn’t want to lose Monday, you don’t want to lose games, (but) we refocused.”
To be sure, the Bonnies (14-4) beat Duquesne (9-9), the way they’ve prevailed all season: defense (the Dukes’ 59 points were under SBU’s seventh-best in the country average of 60.6), rebounding (40-36 advantage, no losses when they win the boards) and balance (all five starters average in double figures and scored between 12 and 18 points).
And Schmidt pointed out, “Sometimes the offense has been good, sometimes it hasn’t been good — offense is fickle — we’ve been successful by defending and rebounding.”
As for the Covid-19 interrupted season, he added, “It’s really different. We’d have a packed house (on VCU’s home court), we’d have a zillion Bonaventure fans. The Atlantic 10 has done a really good job under the circumstances (as have) Richmond and VCU, the host schools.
“I’ve said it all year long, we’re just happy to be playing and the kids are happy to be on the court, no matter if there are 50 people in the gym or back at the Reilly Center where we’d didn’t have anybody all season. It’s the Atlantic 10 and you have competitive guys and they want to play, 5-on-5, no matter if there are 8,000 people in the stands or none. The players (and I) are just grateful that we can play this tournament.”
MEANWHILE, Duquesne’s fourth-year coach, Keith Dambrot, alternated between expressing frustration with his own team and praising the Bonnies
“Our issues today were predictable in some ways, I kind of feel like we got what we deserved,” he said. “We’ve been inconsistent emotionally all year. We’ve been below average as a practice team and I take full responsibility for that.
“We played just as inconsistently (today) as we have all season and (this) game was the epitome of inconsistency … our issues were mostly emotional, nothing to do with basketball.”
Dambrot added of the game, “Our energy and maturity level the whole first half was pitiful. We’ve haven’t shown we’re that far out of (St. Bonaventure’s) league to play like that. We didn’t come out ready to play today … and it snowballed.”
As for the Bonnies, he pointed out, “We’ve played against them so many times, this isn’t a team we’ve seen like once or twice in two years, we see them all the time (and Schmidt is) a really good coach.
“Obviously, if you don’t have discipline, they’re going to hurt you and make you pay.”
Dambrot concluded, “They’ve got good players, they’ve got good discipline and good pieces. What makes them difficult is the big guy at the rim (the 6-foot-10 Osunniyi). That makes them different than most people in the league … nobody else really has that, maybe us and George Mason a little bit.
“(Osunniyi is) one of the best shot-blockers in America … the number doesn’t matter, it’s how many he changes and the psychological effect of having him at the rim. He has good instincts and he’s just a good team-winning guy. They’ve got good players at other places but that guy’s a huge difference-maker.”
And with 18 points, 14 rebounds, a career-high six assists plus three blocks, he was just that Friday against Duquesne.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
