The day after St. Bonaventure won the Atlantic 10 Tournament over Virginia Commonwealth at Dayton and later that afternoon earned a No. 9 seed in the East Regional of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, an enlightening experience unfolded.
While at Tops, a friend who works there and is also a Bona season ticket holder approached me.
“Can you imagine how exciting it will be next year in the Reilly Center?” she wondered. “The whole team is back and after fans weren’t allowed at any home games all of this season, it’s going to be amazing …”
TO BE SURE, the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the faithful from seeing a single RC game in the Bonnies’ eighth NCAA season since 1961.
And that convinced me she was right. While Bona Nation was disappointed in Saturday’s 76-61 loss to No. 8 LSU at Indiana University’s Assembly Hall, it was temporary. That feeling was immediately replaced by the realization the best is likely yet to come.
There’s not a single senior on the squad, and while most every roster changes a bit in the off-season, you can bet the starting five, all juniors, and the top sub, a sophomore, will absolutely be back. And when an NCAA Tournament team has that situation, its fans can’t help but be energized.
AFTER his Bonnies were handled by the Tigers, coach Mark Schmidt was realistic.
“We needed to play our ‘A’ game against LSU and we didn’t. It seemed like it was 4-2 for like 20 minutes …” he said of Bona’s margin that lasted over four. Indeed, Schmidt’s team was up, 8-7, midway through the first half before the Tigers began to pull away to a margin that eventually reached 16.
The problem was St. Bonaventure picked a bad time to go cold from the field, hitting only two of its first 19 shots. At intermission, it was 7-of-30 from the field, 0-for-10 from three, a figure that improved to only 3-of-20 (15%) by game’s end.
But Schmidt has long maintained, “Offense is fickle … we were getting some good looks but we were missing (them), sometimes they don’t go down.”
Guard Jaren Holmes, who had a game-high 18 points, admitted of the Bonnies’ attack, “Those are shots we want and those are the shots that we normally hit.”
It’s likely, when Schmidt looks at the tape, his frustration will instead be getting outrebounded 49-30 and giving up 18 second-chance points.
“THIS WAS a really hard season … it wasn’t easy,” he said afterward, not merely referring to the scheduling chaos created by the coronavirus. Three players left the team after practice started: a pair of 6-foot-8 power forwards, former starter Justin Winston and sophomore recruit Quintin Metcalf, stripping the Bonnies of much-needed height, plus 6-4 guard Anthony Roberts, a transfer from Kent State.
The 14th-year coach admitted of the season-ending defeat, “It’s good that they’re disappointed. You put so much into it, if you’re not disappointed there’s something wrong. 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 we had in the next couple of days.”
Holmes agreed.
“We’re not going to hang our heads, this is a year for excitement,” he maintained. “We were A-10 champs, regular season and tournament. It hasn’t been done in, what, 42 years?
“It’s emotional at the end of the (season) because you don’t know if this same group will come back (but) the starting five, we’re all juniors, and we’re just going to continue to work.”
As for the loss, he added, “Every guy in that locker room is a competitor and one thing about a competitor is he wants to be the best and continue to be the best. Today we weren’t the best, and that’s a problem for us … that’s going to be in our heads for a long time and it’s just going to make us better, keep fighting, working hard and coming closer together.”
Holmes concluded, “It’s just a blessing to be here and to make it (this far) with these guys, these coaches and the year we had.
“I know for a fact that everybody back in Olean is happy and proud of us. I know Dr. (Dennis) DePerro (SBU’s late president) is looking down on us and he’s super proud. (We’re) just using March Madness to uplift a couple of spirits back home in Olean and the DePerro family. We’ll be back, for sure, we’ll be back.”
And that’s exactly what Bonnie fans are thinking.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
