There are times when something one intends to write … thankfully isn’t written.
That happened to me early last month … to my good fortune.
St. Bonaventure’s basketball team had just run off an impressive three-game win streak. The Bonnies beat nemesis Virginia Commonwealth and gritty Richmond in back-to-back road games, then came home and handled Dayton, the preseason pick to win the Atlantic 10 title.
Those victories improved Bona to a modest 13-11 but, more importantly, made it 7-4 in the conference, good for a spot in the A-10’s top four, a position, if they held it, would mean a double bye in the tournament.
It occurred to me that what Mark Schmidt had accomplished with a completely turned over roster should put him in consideration for league Coach of the Year honors.
Indeed, before the next game, at home against underdog LaSalle, I told several friends that if the Bonnies won, as expected, my column would suggest just that.
Alas, the Explorers disappointed a Reilly Center crowd of 3,800 by hanging a 76-70 defeat on Bona. That trashed my column and started a season-ending downward spiral that would have unintentionally embarrassed Schmidt had I written it.
The Bonnies would go on to lose five straight, beat Saint Joseph’s, then get handled at UMass in the regular-season finale and yesterday afternoon by Davidson in their opening-round game of the A-10 Tournament.
Schmidt’s team concluded a once-promising season with two lackluster efforts in 11-point defeats at Amherst, last Saturday, and Brooklyn, a day ago, that left Bona with a pedestrian 14-18 record, second-worst in his 16 years at Bona, only to the 8-22 his first season.
The fact that seven of those losses were by six points-or-fewer, two in overtime, are small solace to Schmidt who will spend the offseason wondering what happened to that team which stirred so much excitement in early February.
And, oh yeah, given the vagaries of the NCAA’s transfer portal, how many of his 10-player scholarship roster will choose to return?
THE PRESS release had been out for only a few minutes Tuesday afternoon when the speculation began.
After seven years, Providence College and women’s basketball coach Jim Crowley had parted ways.
And, by interesting coincidence, St. Bonaventure, the school where he made his reputation, is now in the market for a coach.
Jesse Fleming, the former top assistant, was elevated to that job after Crowley left for Providence in 2016. However, he was released in January with his team at 3-17, 0-5 in the Atlantic 10. In 6½ seasons Fleming was 53-135, 25-77 in the conference.
The irony is, his record wasn’t dissimilar from Crowley’s in his first six seasons at Bona. In that span, his teams were 53-113 and he often joked that the only reason he wasn’t fired was that nobody in administration seemed to notice and his players got good grades and stayed out of trouble.
But then things changed. Over the next 10 seasons Crowley’s Bonnies went 205-117, the last eight of those producing a 171-90 record that included two trips to the NCAA Tournament, one ending in the Sweet 16, the other in the second round, plus four bids to the WNIT.
And with Crowley now a free agent, the talk is about his possible return to the school where he started his Div. I career.
Right now, though, he has more pressing concerns. As happens in college sports, a head coach being let go usually means the staff as well. Crowley’s assistants — Jessica Jenkins, Tiara Johnson and Kelcie Rombach — and Director of Basketball Operations Jennifer Nabrizny are all Bona graduates who played or worked for him, or both.
Presumably they’re out of a job and, guaranteed, Crowley’s first priority is finding work for them.
The other question is, would he come back if the job was offered?
Crowley left for two reasons: a chance to coach in a higher-level league, the Big East, and a decided bump in pay from his reported $200,000 to nearly double that at Providence.
At age 52, would he be willing to take what would be a step down in competition level and return to the Southern Tier from which his wife is a native and where he spent 20 years as an assistant and head coach?
After Crowley took the Friars’ job, Kevin Cunningham, an ’81 Bona graduate sent me an email on why he thought it was a mistake.
A resident of Providence, he pointed out the lack of interest in women’s basketball at the school which translated to low attendance, the anonymity compared to the celebrity status he enjoyed in Olean and recruiting problems the program had endured for years.
In conclusion, Cunningham assessed, “I understand the reasons for Coach Crowley’s decision and wish him and his staff well … unless they’re playing the Bonnies. Unfortunately for them, money, fancy facilities, and a bigger budget will not bring happiness … or wins.”
Meanwhile, conjecture about his possible return won’t go away any time soon as Bona women’s hoops fans won’t let it.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
