By Anthony Gannon
Sports Editor
Bethune-Cookman comes to the Reilly Center tonight for a season-opening 7 o’clock showdown with the Bonnies in their first true home contest in nearly nine months. The Wildcats finished 18-17 last season. Their season ended in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Championship game when they lost to Norfolk State 73-70.
“We picked up some momentum this week,” Coach Mark Schmidt said after last Friday’s scrimmage. “It gives us stuff that we know we need to work on. We need to get better every day to get ready for Bethune-Cookman. We can’t get comfortable just because we beat Mansfield.”
The Bonnies took down Mansfield in their only exhibition game last week.
“This last game we really wanted to establish our identity,” Schmidt said. “We wanted to let the fans know what type of team we were going to be. We went out and played unselfishly; with 24 assists it shows we have unselfish players. And some of the baskets that were assists were coming off steals.”
The Bonnies reached triple digits for the first time since 2002 by beating Mansfield 104-61. Demitrius Conger’s game-high 25 points paced the Bonnies as they ran their up-tempo high-caliber offense almost perfectly.
“For the most part, it was a team effort,” Conger said. “Without my teammates, I wouldn’t have scored 25 points. They were finding me in right spots and boxing out to open things up for me. So I wouldn’t have done that well if it wasn’t for the team effort.”
The team committed 10 turnovers in the game.
“Going in to the game you want to get everyone’s feet wet.,” Schmidt. “I thought we played really well tonight. We played really unselfish basketball and we can see we have unselfish guys out there.”
Last week, Bethune-Cookman defeated Ave Maria in their only exhibition game 85-68. Junior Adrien Coleman’s 33 points led the way for the Wildcats. The Wildcats are a guard heavy team like St. Bonaventure so the matchup promises to be enlightening for both squads coming off successful seasons.
The main factor in the game will be the play of Youssou Ndoye. No player on the Bethune-Cookman roster is taller than 6-8. Redshirt seniors Michael Davenport and Marquise Simmons played for the first time in almost a year against Mansfield and will be relied upon against Bethune-Cookman.
“I talked about getting guys’ feet wet and I was talking about them too, not just the freshmen,” Schmidt said. “A game like this is good to get over the mental side of it and I think going forward it will be a positive experience.”
The Bonnies led by 20 at halftime and, at one point, owned a 45 point lead over the Mounties.
“Our chemistry picked up where we left off from last year,” said junior captain Charlon Kloof said. “We grew tighter and now we’re even more like brothers compared to last year. Now it’s not even a question of should I pass it or not. If you see a white shirt open, you pass him the ball. It’s not even a process of passing the ball.”
The Bonnies freshmen reached the court for the first time last weekend. Some mistakes were made, but the team knows how to overcome the early issues to get ready for the season, according to Schmidt.
“With the freshmen we just try to make sure if they make a mistake we will cover for them,” Kloof said. “I think that’s one thing people underestimate, but we believe in each other and I think that really helps.”
