BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — In the final weeks of this remarkable, surreal run, its moments together had almost always ended with wide smiles.
The St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team danced together after the Atlantic 10 Tournament semifinals in Richmond. It swam through a sea of confetti after winning the championship contest in Dayton. And it hugged one another upon hearing its name called on Selection Sunday.
In this instance, with the finality of it all — everything it had endured to get to this point and everything it wasn’t able to do on Saturday — having finally set in, that time together ended in agony.
Kyle Lofton, who, on this day, was not himself, slogged to the very last seat of the bench area, draped a towel over his head and began crying. He was quickly consoled by one teammate and then another.
The Bonnies dance had come to an end.
The season that almost never was, one that will forever be marked by a pair of league titles, had reached its bittersweet conclusion.
NINTH-seeded Bona started the game 2-of-17 in arguably its worst offensive half of the season. It never fully recovered, falling to No. 8 LSU, 76-61, in a first-round NCAA Tournament matchup inside the famed Assembly Hall.
Afterward, the ugly outcome could be framed quite plainly.
“We needed to play our A-game against LSU,” coach Mark Schmidt began his postgame remarks, “and we didn’t.”
The assessment of this season, however, no matter how it performed on Saturday, needed more than a mere 11 words.
“Give all the credit to our players. They fought and they’re really disappointed,” Schmidt said later. “And it’s good they’re disappointed. I’m disappointed. You put so much into it. (But) as I told the team in the locker room, we did some amazing things. For us to look back and say (the season was) disappointing, absolutely not.
“We didn’t play well today, we lost to a better LSU team. But this game doesn’t define what our guys did. We had a special year. They’re disappointed now, but they’ll realize what a year that we had when they look back on it in the next couple days.”
In the meantime, however, they were almost certainly more fixated on the missed shots, especially considering that so many were of the variety they normally make.
BONA SHOT a miniscule 7-of-30 (23 percent) over the first 20 minutes, including an 0-of-10 mark from 3-point range. Worse, it lost starting guard Dominick Welch to an ankle injury in the early going, and though he returned with 5:28 left in the half, he wasn’t the same.
The Bonnies played strong enough defense — LSU was no better at the start, shooting 4-17 while the game was tied at 4 at the under-12 media timeout — to go into halftime down just nine (31-22).
But that’s ultimately as close as they’d make it.
Desperately needing a strong start to the second half, Bona instead surrendered the first seven points to fall into a 16-point hole. It pulled to within 10 on three occasions and nine once (48-39, 13:19 left) over the final 16 minutes, but never truly posed a challenge to the more talented Tigers.
“It wasn’t our best shooting day, shots didn’t fall for us,” acknowledged junior guard Jaren Holmes, who finished with a team-best 18 points. “I mean, that’s life, that’s basketball. Sometimes it just doesn’t fall. Those are shots we want, those are shots we normally hit and they just didn’t fall today. Theirs fell.”
Echoing that sentiment, Schmidt added: “From an offensive standpoint, it wasn’t perfect, but I thought we were getting some good looks and sometimes those just don’t go down. It’s disappointing, but give LSU credit.”
IN THE end, this was everything that couldn’t have happened if it was going to beat a team of LSU’s caliber.
Bona’s best player struggled — Lofton finished with 10 points on 3-of-18 shooting — while Louisiana State’s was at his best, as star freshman Cameron Thomas poured in 27 points, with 20 of those coming after halftime.
Bona was beaten badly on the boards (49-30), getting too few second-chance opportunities while giving up too many to LSU (which held an 18-8 edge in that category). And it couldn’t quite accomplish its goal of keeping Thomas off the line, as he finished 11-of-13 there.
The Bonnies couldn’t afford to have this be the day they went cold. And it was, as they finished just 33 percent for the game (3-of-20 from deep).
“They hit a couple shots, they hit a couple 3s and they were getting to the line,” Holmes said of LSU’s ability to take, and maintain, control in the second half. “You let a shooter get to the line and continue to see the ball go through the net, it’s good for him.”
Again considering the bigger picture, he added: “We fought hard, we fought together and that’s all that matters, honestly. We didn’t come out victorious, but we learned something today and we’re going to use it as scar tissue and just keep going. The whole starting five’s all juniors, and that’s a fact.
“We have another year and we’re just gonna continuously work.”
ON A number of occasions, it seemed as if Bona might actually be able to cut it to a one- or two-possession game, to give itself another opportunity for one more magic moment in 2020-21. But each time, the Tigers had an answer. And when Thomas drilled an impossible 25 foot, top-of-the-key 3 to make it 67-52 with 5:35 remaining, that was it.
Osun Osunniyi had a quietly strong game of 15 points and nine rebounds for Bona, which finished the season 16-5. Aundre Hyatt and Darius Days each added 13 for the Tigers (19-9), who will meet top-seeded Michigan in Monday’s second round.
For Bona, perhaps the takeaway will soon be not that season ended, but that for the third time in nine years it ended in the NCAA Tournament.
“We just played LSU in March Madness at Indiana University,” Holmes emphasized. “Honestly, this is a magical experience. Not everybody gets to experience March Madness and today, we got to play a really good team and we gave it all we had.
“We left it all on the floor and that’s all I can ask for, that’s all I tried to do, especially in playing a tough team like LSU.”
