BUFFALO — All that kept it from being wire-to-wire were 18 seconds.
St. Bonaventure found itself on the backfoot most of Saturday afternoon’s non-conference Big 4 rivalry game at Buffalo’s Alumni Arena, falling behind 17-7 after just over seven minutes, but strung together a 14-3 run to take its first lead at 21-20 on a layup from backup big man Max Amadasun with 7:43 remaining. The Bonnies never led before, or after.
A mere 18 seconds later, UB had its answer, a 3-pointer from sophomore guard Curtis Jones, starting a 17-4 run to wrestle back control. Buffalo led by six at halftime and quickly extended its lead further in the second half, pulling away for an 83-66 win led by Jones’ 32-point career night.
For every run Bona (5-3) made, UB (4-4) had a bigger one to answer. The Bonnies’ shaky shooting, both at the free-throw line (9-of-19) and from 3-point range (3-of-15) didn’t help; neither did the five fouls Bona center Chad Venning picked up in just 12:41 scoreless minutes.
“You can’t shoot 9-for-19 from the foul line on the road against a good team and have a chance and your 5-man can’t have zero points,” Bona coach Mark Schmidt said. “I thought we showed some youth. We cut it to six at halftime and we didn’t play well in the first half but I thought it was a moral victory just to be down by six and we had to come out in the second half in the first five minutes, first 10 possessions and we didn’t get the job done there. But they played much better than us and they deserved the win.”
Ending a four-game win streak, Bona fell to 0-2 in “true” road games, after an 84-80 overtime loss to Canisius; it is 4-0 at the Reilly Center and 1-1 at neutral sites, losing to South Dakota State in Sioux Falls and beating Notre Dame on Long Island.
“Winning on the road is more difficult, certainly,” Schmidt said. “It’s easier, 70% of games are won by the home team for a reason. We’ve got a young team and we’ve got to figure out how to win on the road and you’ve got to defend and rebound and we didn’t do those two things today. And you’ve got to make some foul shots. When they’re making runs and you get to the foul line, that’s how you stop the bleeding and we didn’t stop the bleeding.”
Jones efficiently shot over the Bona defense, 13-of-22 from the field and 5-of-10 from the 3-point line. The Minneapolis native had scored 22 points each in his last three games.
Freshman Yann Farell scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds, both team-highs, for Bona. UB held Bona’s dynamic backcourt of Daryl Banks and Kyrell Luc below their scoring averages with Banks scoring 16 points on 6-of-15 shooting (0-of-7 from 3) and Luc scoring 10 (5-of-9). Moses Flowers scored 10 points off the bench.
“He made some shots. He needs to make one or two of those foul shots,” Schmidt said of Farell, who was 2-of-6 at the line. “But he’s getting better, he’s young, they’re all young so they’re going to have their ups and downs. Some days they’re going to play better than others. And offensively, we got some baskets and so forth, but we didn’t defend. And when you don’t defend on the road, you’re not going to win.”
UB coach Jim Whitesell, a fourth-year head coach after four years as a Bulls assistant, expected Bona to make its runs. His team had the answer, none bigger than after a Farell layup cut the lead to 63-57 with 5:26 to play.
“(If you) watched the Notre Dame game, that thing wasn’t close. And then the other night they beat a really good Middle Tennessee State team, that team’s very good. So you knew that they were going to punch back and they were going to make a move.
“You’ve got to answer back when they punch ya, and you know Bonnies is gonna do that, definitely.”
Whitesell improved to 2-1 against Bona as head coach. He sees value in the continued rivalry between mid-major Western New York schools.
“It’s great. I think it builds interest in the community,” Whitesell said. “I think for our guys, they take a lot of pride in playing these games. I think it’s exciting for them. I think LaQiill (Hardnett) said last week it’s kind of like playing a conference game, there’s that intensity, every possession counts, every free throw counts. It’s magnified more here. I think it’s good and these two programs have been awfully good.
“I’ve been fortunate to be here eight years and the success both of these programs have had, you should have great crowds. You should have a good rivalry, it should be of a lot of interest in the area because it’s really good basketball. There’s a lot of good players out there. I think the teams are excited about playing each other and I think it’s a good thing.”
For Bona, its win streak is over, but Schmidt expected some ups and downs with this group.
“We’re going to take two steps forward and we’re going to take a step back at times,” he said. “I think you watched a young team not handle adversity too well. It’s easy to handle it at home, you get your crowd, but on the road, when you hear some boos and when the other team is making shots and they hear cheers, it’s a little bit more difficult.
“So we didn’t handle that and you learn how to win on the road by winning. So we’ve got to go back and we’ve just got to play better on the road. We’ve just got to play better.”
