By Tyler Diedrich
Editor-in-Chief
St. Bonaventure is back down to earth this Sunday morning. The #BonaNation wishes it was still in Nashville, awaiting an NCAA Round of 32 game between the Bonnies men and Cincinnati, but it’s instead reflecting – on what this last week has been, and on what it could have been.
I can’t attest to what the campus felt like after the Bonnies fell in the 2000 NCAA Tournament to Kentucky in double overtime, but I can say this loss hurts.
For now, at least.
Stunned silence filled the Bonaventure contingent at Bridgestone Arena Friday as the clock hit 0.0 in the Bonnies’ 66-63 loss to Florida State. The Bonnies’ captivating late-season run to the Big Dance didn’t feel real, and neither did the season’s conclusion Friday afternoon.
The Bonnies led by as many as 10 and never trailed until 5:18 remained in the game. Even after a late 12-0 Florida State run put the Seminoles up by eight with 2:46 to go, two threes by Demitrius Conger and one by Andrew Nicholson brought the Bonnies back within two with 27 seconds to play.
But time soon ran out on the 2011-12 season. Bonaventure had its heart broken again, and pictures showing FSU’s Okaro White getting away with a clear violation on a last-minute inbound pass didn’t exactly help matters.
Unlike the 2000 season, however, the Bonnies and their fans can take solace in an accomplishment no previous Bonaventure team has attained before – a conference championship.
No Bonnie will ever forget that magical day in Atlantic City when the Bonnies dropped Xavier to win the Atlantic 10 Championship. It can never be taken away nor topped, only duplicated.
Then campus rejoiced early Monday morning when the team returned to the Reilly Center and again that night when it was honored during the women’s selection show. Bona pride filled the air outside the RC when campus gathered again Wednesday morning to send its team off to the NCAA Tournament, followed by the mass exodus to Nashville the following days. It was an incredible week to be a Bonnie – a week no one saw coming and no one will soon forget. After all, is there anything better than a good surprise?
Coach Mark Schmidt put the season into perspective following Friday’s loss.
“People had us dead,” Schmidt said, referring to season-ending injuries to Marquise Simmons and Michael Davenport early in the season. “We fought. Our guys came back. We had great bench play, our young guys really developed and, you know, whatever happened in 1970, whatever happened in 1977, when we left (Wednesday) and the streets were lined, there wasn’t a better feeling in the world.”
“I think we brought pride and spirit back to our community.”
They sure did.
Ten years from now, the pain from the FSU game will be all but exorcised, if not completely healed. But seeing the A-10 championship banner hanging from the RC rafters will be this team’s defining moment – the one everyone on campus this week will remember more than any win, loss or thunder dunk they ever witnessed at Bonaventure. To Schmidt, Nicholson and the rest of the Bonnies, thanks for an incredible ride.
