By Taylor Nigrelli
Sports Editor
In his first six seasons as head coach of St. Bonaventure men’s basketball, Mark Schmidt has taken on plenty of seemingly impossible challenges.
He inherited a program decimated by NCAA sanctions stemming from the Jamil Terrell scandal. He overcame the school’s location, financial and size issues to recruit players capable of performing at the highest level of college basketball.
Schmidt navigated the team through a tough conference slate en route to the school’s first Atlantic 10 men’s basketball championship. Last season, he was forced to replace an all-time program great in Andrew Nicholson and still led the team to a respectable 7-9 conference record.
This season, Schmidt faces perhaps his toughest challenge yet. He will attempt to replace the production of last year’s seniors Demitrius Conger, Eric Mosley, Chris Johnson and Michael Davenport. The quartet accounted for an astounding 59.9 percent of the team’s scoring last season.
Schmidt knows this will be no simple task, but he thinks it will be possible to accomplish if his team improves across the board.
“It’ll be difficult,” Schmidt said. “Demitrius, Eric and Chris were tremendous players and Michael came in and scored some baskets for us too.
“We have to have good play from our guards – Charlon, Matthew and Jordan need to have really strong year. Youssou has to do a good job inside. Marquise has to give us some punch inside.”
Every year, college basketball programs are forced to replace their best players – it’s the nature of the game. While teams rarely have to replace such a large percentage of their productions, it’s something a veteran coach like Schmidt is used to.
He believes that the key to replacing one year’s primary players is for that year’s ancillary players to become primary players the next season.
“Our role guys last year – Charlon (Kloof), Matthew (Wright), Marquise (Simmons) and Jordan (Gathers) – have to be guys we can go to this year,” Schmidt said. “To me, that’s the evolution of a good player. They go from a position where they were a secondary-type player to a position where they’re main guys. And those main guys have to play well.”
While Schmidt expects last year’s secondary players to take on a bigger role, he also expects last season’s freshmen to take on the secondary role.
“It’s so difficult to play at this level as a freshman,” Schmidt said. “There’s so much you have to learn. So I think with Dion (Wright) and Jean (Toupane), they have a year under their belt, and they understand the system. They’re stronger physically, and they’re stronger mentally. So we’re expecting those guys to be integral parts on the team.”
Since he arrived at St. Bonaventure, Schmidt has touted the values of his “trifecta.” This trio of skills includes defense, rebounding and ball handling. While the team may not have as much scoring talent as last season, Schmidt believes if they pay attention to the “trifecta,” they’ll be successful.
“We talk about the ‘trifecta’ all the time – defend, rebound, take care of the ball,” Schmidt said. “If we take care of the basketball, we’ll be able to score some points. If we’re turning it over, we’ll have trouble scoring. And transition defense is the hardest thing to do in college basketball. So, if we take care of the ball, that’s going to help our defense. And if we have a set defense, that’s going to help our rebounding.”
Schmidt admits the team struggled to play defense and rebound last year. He said he doesn’t think that will be an issue this season. In fact, he considers the team’s inside game one of its strengths.
“Last year, we were stronger on the perimeter than inside,” Schmidt said. “This year, we have a blend. Hopefully, Youssou (Ndoye), Chris (Dees), Marquise and Matthias (Runs) can do some work inside and get some of those easy baskets so we don’t have to rely on the jump shot so much.”
Schmidt doesn’t have any specific predictions or goals for the season. Like most coaches, he wants to see his team improve and win every game.
“We just want to get better every day,” Schmidt said. “The polls have us ranked 13th, and we’re not concerned with that. We’re concerned with getting better every day and going out to try to win every game. We have 31 of them,
