ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — He shouldn’t have been out that far.

That much we can probably all acknowledge.

But when you understand more deeply how his teammates view him — and how he views his teammates — it becomes easier to see why exactly Alpha Okoli, the last guy off the bench, was in the middle of that brief second-half dustup between the St. Bonaventure and Duquesne men’s basketball teams last Friday.

The incident, a mere blip in the Bonnies’ impressive push to Sunday’s Atlantic 10 Tournament championship game, happened with 13:42 left in an eventual 75-59 Bona quarterfinal victory.

Toby Okani threw down a breakaway dunk to cap a 10-0 Dukes run and draw a timeout from the Bonnies. Okani reacted, which led to some words, which led to Duquesne’s bench spilling into the area and a gaggle of players being nose-to-nose with one another.

It looked like trouble. And that’s why Okoli reacted the way he did, meandering from the Bona bench at the other end of the floor into the middle of the pile and making his presence known before being yanked away by a Bona assistant.

THE JUNIOR guard, of course, doesn’t play very much, appearing in only three games this season for a total of nine minutes. At this point, he’s likely never going to be a regular part of the Bona rotation.

But at a time when this word is becoming increasingly harder to come by in college basketball, he’s loyal beyond measure. He brings the kinds of intangibles that have come to describe this team as a whole.

He’s fearless, tough, tenacious.

And he’ll always have his brothers’ backs, especially if it looks as though an entire team is converging on two or three of them at the onset of a timeout.

That much was made clear by how his teammates spoke about him after the Bonnies’ 88-41 evisceration of George Washington a week earlier, when Okoli made his first on-court impact of the year, scoring five points in seven minutes.

“Alpha is probably the most genuine and most respectful guy I’ve ever met and it’s an honor to have him as a brother and to have him be a part of this family,” classmate Jaren Holmes said that day. “He’s such a great guy. He helps me every single day, he helps me keep my confidence. He’s just a great kid. A lot of people don’t see what we see behind closed doors, but he’s probably the best guy, best friend, best attitude on the team.”

On a squad that boasts five ultra-talented starters and nine guys who have remained committed this winter, Holmes added, unequivocally, “Alpha Okoli is the glue that keeps us together on this team and Alpha Okoli is the guy that everybody would want on their team and truly a best friend for the rest of my life.”

OKOLI, though it went largely unnoticed, was given an administrative technical for leaving the bench and ejected from the game.

But after the timeout and the ensuing free throws, it was all Bona.

With their lead down to single digits (47-39), the Bonnies responded with runs of 11-2 and 16-4 to retake control and slam the door shut on a potential Duquesne comeback. They played with the kind of unmistakable, indomitable fire that this team has displayed almost from the beginning.

Afterward, they’d attributed their turnaround to the timeout itself, saying that they used it to regain their composure and better gameplan for Duquesne’s press, which had led to four-straight turnovers. And that’s almost certainly true; Bona has a veteran, focused team that knows how to handle itself in such situations, junior guard Dominick Welch noted.

But, judging by how they talk about him, you’d have believed it if they said that Okoli’s willingness to enter the fray and subsequent ejection was as much a spark in getting them back on track.

THE BONA fan base seemed to think so.

“Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we needed,” one fan, who attached a picture of Okoli, tweeted playfully. They wouldn’t have gotten an argument from point guard Kyle Lofton, who responded to one such suggestion with, “he’s ride or die all the way.”

The whole encounter was “unfortunate,” Bona coach Mark Schmidt said in the aftermath. And it was. But it was also another example of the kind of tight-knit nature that has made this 2020-21 team so special.

“Alpha’s one of my best friends here,” Lofton said after that GW game. “I see everything behind closed doors. He doesn’t really play much, but he doesn’t give up. He’s with me everyday in the gym, he’s a hard worker regardless of the situation he’s in.

“And to see stuff like that, it wasn’t luck (that Okoli made his first shot against the Colonials, a 3-pointer). Him making the first shot he got, he works for this. And he just never gave up and I was really happy for him.”

(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)