PHILADELPHIA — Probably none of them saw this coming.
None of them saw St. Bonaventure, having a decent season and fresh from back-to-back wins over Fordham and Davidson, getting taken apart Wednesday night, 72-59, by a La Salle team that had recently dropped eight of nine.
None of them saw the Bonnies shooting just 43.8 percent, only 6-for-17, 35.3 percent from 3-point range in falling to 16-11 overall, an even 7-7 (.500) in the Atlantic 10.
Meanwhile Fran Dunphy’s 13-14 Explorers lit it up at 51.0 percent clip, going 10-for-24, 41.7 percent from deep.
That, plus his team’s inability to contain LaSalle’s dribble penetration — which resulted in a number of open threes or else easy drives to the hoop — seemed to bother longtime Bonnies’ coach, Mark Schmidt the most. It also might explain why he spent some 20 minutes trying to shake this debacle off before coming out to meet with the media, by which time his players were already on the bus.
So don’t expect the next few days leading up to Saturday’s game in Amherst against UMass to be much fun.
“We got outplayed, which is frustrating,” said Schmidt once he finally emerged from the locker room.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well. Didn’t execute our offense well enough. Didn’t have enough pace.
“What upset me was their dribble penetration and our inability to keep them in front, along with our inability to get to the 3-point line. We had a hard time keeping them in front of us in the first half and in the second half they were driving and kicking and got a lot of points in the paint.
“They were scoring and we weren’t scoring.”
That’s never a good recipe for winning. Still, mostly thanks to 6-foot-10 center Chad Venning the Bonnies stayed within striking distance most of the night. In fact LaSalle’s lead never reached double figures until the final 10 minutes.
It was only 52-44 when Moses Flowers hit one of two free throws with 8:15 left. That’s when the Explorers exploded with a 13-1 run to break it open, 65-45, Daeshon Shepherd’s thunderous breakaway dunk sealing the deal.
While Venning pounded his way inside to 22 points for St. Bonaventure, he didn’t get much help.
Moses Flowers (14) was the only other Bonnie to reach double figures, while Mika Adams-Woods was held to six and Assa Essamvous, who lit up Fordham for 23 — including 7-for-7 beyond the arc — and had 15 against Davidson, managed just one trey.
“He can shoot but didn’t shoot well tonight,” lamented Schmidt. “None of us played well tonight.
“I thought the problem we had is our offense is affected by our defense. On the road you win with your defense and we didn’t have our defense.
“We’ve struggled on the road. 4-5. Like most teams they play much better at home. They’ve got good guards (Shepherd and Jhamir Brickus, who scored 23 and 15 points respectively, including seven threes). They just beat UMass before us.”
Speaking of the Minutemen, Schmidt knows his team will be in for a battle up there.
“UMass is a physical team,” he warned. “They hit the backboards.
“We’ll have to match up with them.”
Unfortunately for the Bonnies, that wasn’t the case Wednesday night in Tom Gola Arena against a La Salle team that improved to just 4-10 in the conference, while dropping Bona back to .500 at 7-7.
